Supernatural Support Society
by Zantetsuken Reverse
Summary: What do you do after your adventure is over? Pretending to be normal isn't easy. That's why these guys made a support group for those who can't tell their psychologist about their demonic, supernatural, or alien problems. Should be simple. They just have to deal with those guys who think they're a supervillain league. Oh, and survive everyday life.
1. Chapter 1: It Begins

For those of you not in the know, this is a spin-off of another fanfiction that I wrote. You don't need to read that one to know this one. It's a Castlevania fanfiction called Not the Intended Use, and it's about Soma using his soul powers in everyday life. In that one, I gave Soma's roommates the names of the heroes of SMT1 and SMT Nocturne, and over time I decided that they were actually those characters. Then the story started going into other SMT characters, and it got to the point where there was an entire chapter about Persona 2. In a Castlevania fanfiction. So after enough people got annoyed with too much SMT with not enough Castlevania, I decided to snap back that fic to only have Castlevania stuff, and made this fanfiction to hold all my ideas that pertain to both game series.

For those of you who do know about Not the Intended Use, the events of that story will _almost_ be the same as that one, but not. This is because I don't want to lock Soma out of the loop for what will be in-story several months (he doesn't find out until after he gets his powers back after Dawn of Sorrow, which I think takes place in winter), but I still like the idea that he's also doing his own stuff elsewhere. Plus, I want to correct some mistakes that can't be fixed in the other fic because the plot depends on those mistakes. The differences will be summarized at the end, and eventually the events will be more or less identical.

I know some of Japanese conventions when it comes to calling people by their name, but I can't discern the nuances. I'll try to use surnames and first names when I can, but no honorifics.

Out of all the SMT 'friends of the main character that he has to kill' (Apocalypse doesn't count because you don't _have_ to kill them), I have to say that I sympathize with Issachar the most. I really feel sorry that he couldn't become a samurai. He's not rejected because he has a character flaw that he has to overcome, a lack of physical or mental strength, or even because he's a jerk or would mistreat demons, but just because he wasn't Chosen. He looks up at the other samurai and wonders, "Why not me?" It's a wrench in the stock plot of 'childhood friends becoming knights/wizards/samurai/whatever together'. He dreams of becoming a samurai, and once that passes, he has no other life than farming. No wonder he read the books.

I've been playing lots of Apocalypse. I'm really hooked. Funny thing happened. I was fighting Mara, which in this game, uses physical attacks only. I didn't bother saving because of the free revives, and then it turned out to be a pretty hard fight. It got worse when Nanashi got charmed and cast Mediarahan on Mara. I decided to throw in the towel and commit suicide by auto battle… and then it turned out that I had Rangda out. Rangda repels physical damage. Turns out, all I had to do was have her be my only demon out, turn on auto battle, and let her and my partners take care of it.

I found something about SMT1 hero appearing in SMT2 as a corpse, but I haven't seen anything about it yet. Could someone tell me where I can find it?

EDIT: Stuff about SMT1 and 2 got retconned. Details below.

Minor edit: I originally made Naoki live in Roppongi, which turns out to actually be a really expensive place to live (and I thought of him as being kind of poor). When I wrote the chapter, I thought that Naoki lived somewhere south of Shinjuku because he had to move north to get to the hospital after leaving the train station, but it turns out that Yoyogi Station is just the closest place and just happens to be to the south. So all I could conclude was that Naoki lives at least far away enough to necessitate a train ticket, and placed him somewhere else.

Supernatural Support Society

Count Dracula. The dreaded King of All Vampires, Ruler of the Night, Enslaver of Souls, Master of Castlevania, and never, ever called the Prince of Darkness. Once known as the tactician Mathias Cronqvist, now a vampire hellbent on the destruction of humanity. Reincarnation could only slow him down. No matter how many times he was killed, he would return.

The Demi-Fiend. Once mortal, he was blessed by the Morningstar to become his champion. He journeyed through a dead world and slew the Fiends, rejected the ideals of others and reconstructed the world.

Adam. An ordinary boy who refused to let his city fall into ruin, and fought those who would do it harm. When he failed, he trekked across the ashes of his home, killing all those who got in his way, and snatched the fate of humanity from the arms of the angels and the claws of the demons.

By a twist of fate, these three shall meet. How will this go? Will they kill each other? Will they forge an alliance? Will they gang up on-?

"You play SNES game on an actual SNES? I've never met anyone else who does that!"

"You're telling me that you walked here all the way from Tokyo?"

"How the hell did you fit an entire cake inside your jacket?"

"I'm an underwear thief."

…You know what, never mind.

It was a warm April day when the first year college students moved into their dorms. Kazuya Suou (A/N _not a mistake_ ) had passed the entrance exam to the university known as Haruhata (er, Spring Field) [1] with flying colors.

When Kazuya arrived at the dorm, it was empty. It was a clean, bare room with two bunk beds (that is, four beds total) and three chests for clothes. The room was build to hold two people, but it was made to hold four last year and they didn't bother to take out the extra bunk this year. Kazuya didn't mind; he had spent many of his nights sleeping in abandoned buildings, sewers, battlefields, and on one occasion on top of a giant turtle in the ocean with blanket woven from seaweed.

He planned to unpack his clothes and make his bed, but first, he wanted to send his mother a video phone call about how he got to school just fine.

Half an hour later, he was still messing around on the internet when a guy with white hair and a sandwich came in. "Hello," said the newcomer. "Are you my roommate? I'm Soma Cruz."

"Hello, I'm Kazuya, don't touch my computer and we'll get along just fine," said Kazuya, his stomach grumbling at the smell of the sandwich.

Soma blinked. "So, um…are you saying that you don't mind me calling you by your first name?"

"Not really." Kazuya wasn't called by his surname very often during his adventure. It wasn't safe to use the full name of a wanted criminal when Tokyo was in lockdown. After the apocalypse hit, he gave up his surname and everyone called him Kazuya. "Besides, we're going to be close for the next year. Might as well get it over with."

Soma nodded. "You can call me Soma, then. So, which bed is yours?"

"I haven't unpacked, and I don't care," said Kazuya. "When Kashima gets here, I'll take the bed that neither of you want."

While Soma unpacked, Kazuya watched for the subtle signs of a fighter. He wondered if Soma was a demon or holy warrior in disguise sent by the Law faction (Kazuya knew that the Law and Chaos sides weren't really 'sides' as much as 'groups of variously connected people with one or a few shared ideals', but in this case he could generalize). He first heard about his roommates on the college web site, which listed their names and not much else. He wasn't really wondering about Naoki Kashima, but the name Cruz worried him. The web site had Soma's surname in both kanji form (Kurusu) and Roman letters in parenthesis. He really should have picked up on the fact that Ambassador Thorman was Thor. At least Yuriko had a decent alias. Kazuya suspected that Louis Cypher was a demon, but couldn't figure out which one.

 _Naming someone something that literally meant Cross is a dead giveaway, but it is a legitimate surname_ , Kazuya thought _. On the other hand, I've never met anyone my age with white hair. Unusual hair colors tend to be a sign in anime. Even the roots are white, so it's not dyed. Unless he's a natural blonde and I can't tell the difference._ "Hey, Soma," said Kazuya in the end. "Is your surname Kurusu or Cruz? The site says that you're Kurusu."

Soma sighed. "If you can say Cruz properly, call me Cruz. Otherwise, call me Kurusu."

"Sure," said Kazuya. "Cruz, Cruz… Am I saying it right, or should I stick with Kurusu?" When Soma gave him a slightly surprised look, he added, "Well?"

"Oh, sorry," said Soma, blinking. "You said it perfectly. It's just that everyone always asks me why I have two surnames."

Kazuya nodded. Years of trying to pronounce the names of his many demons had trained him to pronounce words that most Japanese speakers would have trouble with. Compared to Tezcatlipoca, Cruz was easy.

"…Are you going to ask me why I have two surnames?" asked Soma warily.

"No," said Kazuya.

"Good," Soma said. "I'm going to do the orientation stuff. See you."

Five seconds after he could no longer hear Soma's footsteps, Kazuya started rummaging through his new roommate's stuff. He found clothes. And a computer (one of those newfangled touchscreen laptops; as if gauntlets with keyboards weren't enough). And underwear. And-

"Hi!" said a cheery voice from behind. "I'm Naoki! Which one are you, Soma or-"

The finely tuned fighting instinct that Kazuya spent years sharpening started ringing alarm bells. He sensed a Fiend of otherworldly power. He spun around quickly, picking up an old fashioned shaving razor as his weapon, and swinging it with enough force to decapitate an elephant.

His target, who was several inches (or several feet) smaller than the expected superdemon, just stared at him as Kazuya overswung and fell down. "…Are you a serial killer?"

Kazuya got a good look at his other roommate. He was half a head shorter than Kazuya, who wasn't particularly tall to begin with. He had the physique of a kung fu movie protagonist who had not yet met the old master: scrawny loser. Still, Kazuya knew that he lived in a world where random people on the streets inexplicably could set things on fire with the power of their minds, so he didn't write him off. "You're Kashima, I suppose." He held out his hand. "Kazuya Suou. Call me Kazuya. Don't touch my computer or else. Soma Cruz went out."

"Are we going to pretend that you attempting to kill me with a razor never happened?" asked Naoki.

"Yes," said Kazuya bluntly.

"Okay," said Naoki, who just shrugged as if it really didn't bother him. "I'm Naoki Kashima, but you can call me Naoki. My favorite drink is lychee bubble tea. That's a really nice pair of pants you're holding. Where'd you get it from?"

Kazuya slowly realized that he was holding Soma's pants, and that Naoki thought the chest Kazuya was currently rummaging through belonged to Kazuya. Kazuya also realized that when Soma came back and inevitably opened his own chest, Naoki would ask him why he was in Kazuya's chest, and then Soma would ask why Naoki thought that it was Kazuya's chest…

"I'm an underwear thief," said Kazuya coldly. Years of dealing with people taught him that saying things in the right tone could stop a conversation immediately.

Naoki stared. Kazuya had that effect on people who didn't know him. "Right. If you don't want me to tell our other roommate, you'll have to buy me whatever I want for lunch. Also, never take my stuff."

"Deal."

X

"So, where are you from?" asked Naoki over a mouthful of his second bowl of the most expensive thing they sold in the cafeteria.

"Kichijoji," said Kazuya, quietly eating his yakisoba. "You?"

"Inaba," said Naoki. "Ever heard of it?"

"Does it have to do with sewn-up rabbits?" asked Kazuya.

"Not as far as I know," said Naoki. "I've never been to Kichijoji. Is it nice?"

"Very," said Kazuya. After living through the hellish landscape of Nuked Tokyo, he could appreciate how beautiful and peaceful his hometown was. He could walk down the streets without anyone attacking him. Greenery was everywhere. His mother was very surprised to find that he suddenly loved vegetables. "The coffee there is the best. Do you like coffee?"

"I love food," said Naoki. "I should learn how to cook one of these days. I got a book called 'Cooking sans Equipment, Ingredients, or Oven,' but I haven't gotten the chance to make anything."

"There's a book like that?" said Kazuya. "We're living on our own now, so we're going to get a lot of mileage out of it. I knew that I'd want a frying pan for college, but not measuring spoons. You don't realize what you don't have until you don't have it."

"I know, right?" said Naoki. He stared off into space, creeping out some girls who happened to be in his life of vision. For a moment, Kazuya felt an odd kinship with the boy in front of him.

Behind them, someone cleared his throat. "So you're Kashima?" said Soma. "I saw your picture on your Spacebook account. I'm your other roommate, Soma Cruz. You can call me Soma. If you can't pronounce Cruz, call me Kurusu."

Internally, Kazuya kicked himself. He completely forgot about social media. When he got back from the future, he was dropped into a world where people took it for granted. He couldn't just go and ask someone what Tweeter was. He never bothered to set up any accounts. Checking to see if Soma existed before today would be easy with the internet.

"Hi, you can call me Naoki," said Naoki, oblivious to Kazuya's dark mood. "Nice to meet you!"

Soma nodded politely. "Now then… Kazuya, give me back my underwear!"

X

"Well, that could have gone better," Kazuya said to Naoki later that night. Soma had run off to be with a friend from high school, leaving them alone in their room.

Naoki shrugged. "I don't think that bribing him was the proper response."

"What else would you have done?" retorted Kazuya.

"I don't know," said Naoki. "I would think that he would have asked for something. Ma—money, or something." He then walked towards his bag. "Still haven't unpacked."

Naoki then muttered something under his breath, most likely cursing.

Kazuya went stock still. Naoki was speaking in a demon's tongue. Kazuya relied on the COMP's translator for every negotiation, but the COMP could only translate after the demon spoke a full sentence. Countless times before, Kazuya heard the voices of demons before the reassuringly electronic voice of the COMP chimed in. He didn't trust himself to be able to speak it on his own, but he could always discern basic words like 'macca', 'Life Stone', and 'alcohol'.

Kazuya quickly realized that by seeing Soma as a dead giveaway, he overlooked Naoki as a potential threat. He racked his memory of bad thrillers for how to identify someone as a spy. No ideas came, so he started searching the room for a weapon.

He saw an apple. With the expert aim of a master marksman (i.e. an untrained amateur gunslinger who only got really good by shooting lots of demons under stressful circumstances), he threw the apple at full force at Naoki's head.

Naoki spun around and caught the apple with his left hand, completely crushing it. With the same momentum from the spin, he threw another apple at Kazuya, who moved to catch it in midair. He quickly found that that was a bad idea. Naoki's strength was inhuman. Kazuya's arm was thrust backwards by the strain of the throw, but he managed to hold on.

There was a tense silence. "I really should have guessed earlier," said Kazuya.

Naoki shrugged, his body moving into a relaxed fighting stance. "I guessed it the minute I saw you. You reek of demon."

Kazuya sighed. "I never thought I'd be one-upped like that."

"For a demon, you really-" "Summoners always br-"

The silence this time was much less tense. Naoki broke it.

"You mean that you're not a demon?" he said. "B-but you smell like one!"

"Real rude," said Kazuya, crossing his arms. "I thought you were a Summoner. You're a demon? Interesting." He took out his COMP, put on the headgear, and set it to Analyze.

"What are you doing?" asked Naoki.

"Analyzing you," said Kazuya. The eyepiece said, 'NO DATA.' "So I've never met one of your kind before. Interesting."

Naoki stared at the computer. "People actually use those things? I didn't know they still made computers that old."

"Shut up, it's retro," said Kazuya. He refused to upgrade his COMP when he had the chance for several reasons. First, he didn't trust anyone to not intercept the data transfer for the Demon Summoning Program. Second, it still worked after the ridiculous amount of abuse he put it through and he didn't trust phones to be as sturdy. Third, he had to keep repairing it whenever it broke for whatever reason, and he didn't know how to fix a smartphone. Fourth, he didn't want to spend money on a new one. Fifth, he died because he couldn't summon demons to help him, so he was paranoid about losing it. Sixth, it kept a charge like nothing else. Ever since he downloaded the Demon Summoning Program, his COMP was always at full battery. Kazuya didn't dare to open it up in fear of it losing its charge.

"Since when could computers do something like that?" said Naoki. "This is getting weird."

"What?" said Kazuya, looking at Naoki with his other eye. "You don't know about summoning demons with computers?"

"Summoning demons with computers?" echoed Naoki. "What, chalk and candles not good enough for you?"

"Too messy, can't find a decent virgin sacrifice without getting the cops on my case, and I like having a soul," said Kazuya. "Macca, Magnetite, and Life Stones not good enough?"

"I'd take Macca and Life Stones, but why would I want really magnetic iron?" asked Naoki.

"Don't you… like, need it to retain your physical form in our world?" said Kazuya.

"No, I use food to stay alive," said Naoki. "Human food, not demon food—I mean, I eat the same food as humans do! I'm not a cannibal! I mean, I am a cannibal, because I used to eat demons, but I'm off the-"

Naoki then stared at Kazuya, realization dawning. "You have no idea who I am."

"No, I really don't," said Kazuya. "And judging by your reactions, you don't know who I am, either."

Naoki broke into a fit of nervous laughter. Kazuya just stared. "Oh, darn, I'm paranoid!" he said between giggles. "I thought you were an assassin!"

"Why would I be an assassin?" asked Kazuya, wondering why a teenage boy would say 'darn' instead of something stronger, and then his eyes fell upon Soma's chest. "…I'm not one to talk." He sat on his bed ladder. "Do you know who I am?"

"Other than what you told me, no," said Naoki. "I tried to look you up online, but I kept on getting redirected to news articles about a cop who climbed a burning tree to save the life of a cat."

Kazuya sighed irritably. It was neither the first nor the last time he had to explain this. "That's my cousin, Ka _tsu_ ya Suou. Our dads were brothers, they had a fight, didn't talk to each other for over a decade, and by the time they made up it turned out that they named their firstborn sons after their father."

Naoki whistled. "I went to elementary school with a Naoki Konishi. But we're getting off topic."

"Yes, we are," said Kazuya. "So you have no idea who I am, and I don't know who you are. I'm a demon summoner, and you're a demon."

"That just about covers it," said Naoki. "Also, I have no ill intent towards you or to humanity in general."

"Same here," said Kazuya.

There was a long and awkward pause.

"… You know, if we don't tell each other right now about who we are, why I summon demons, and why you're one, we're just going to think the worst of each other," said Kazuya. "As you can imagine, I hold contracts with demons, but I don't trust them. As a demon, why do you think I summon them?"

"Off the top of my head, you sold your soul to a demon for immortality, to marry the most beautiful woman in the world, and to get revenge on a girl whose advances you spurned and her boyfriend whom she manipulated into beating you up," said Naoki. "Oh, and you summon demons with a computer because the internet is haunted. What about me?"

Kazuya snorted. "Well, when I think of a demon in college, I think that you're an immortal demon trying to study philosophy so that you can incite chaos in the proletariat and encourage a Marxist uprising."

Naoki burst out laughing. "Actually, I'm a physics major," said Naoki. "I was expecting you to think that I'm an immortal demon who for some reason looks young enough to be forced to go to school by the laws of the modern era. No, I'm actually genuinely 18."

Kazuya whistled. "Ironic," he said. "I'm 66."

"What?" said Naoki.

"I'll put my chips on the table if you do the same," said Kazuya. When Naoki nodded, he started to speak.

"Two years ago, in the year 1999, I was sixteen years old."

"But it's 20-"

" _Roll with it_. I was sixteen years old. One day, I got an email from someone I didn't know…"

Kazuya's story was an… interesting one. He had survived a nuclear apocalypse and reforged the city of Tokyo alongside his love and his dog. That is, his love and his dog were two separate people, named Aoi and Pascal.

After ensuring that humans would rebuild from the ashes, Kazuya decided to make a new city. Aoi had suggested Neo Tokyo, but Kazuya vetoed that because naming a city after one that was infamous for exploding was probably bad for morale, even if no copies of the manga survived. He couldn't come up with a good name, so he held a ballot and Valhalla won. They then made a democracy. It wasn't a very good one and it was much slower than the previous anarchy, but it organized the labor force and stopped people from wasting their time worshipping fossil idols instead of getting stuff done.

However, since the point of the government was to make an organized and free society, the Messians quickly exploited the system to take over. They built Tokyo Millennium and the Center, and relegated Valhalla to a district. But even though they hated Kazuya, they decided to let him stay in control of Valhalla for decades because he was still the guy who a) built the place with demons, b) was an infamously powerful warrior who slew both Lucifer's demons and the Archangels, and c) had both Gaeans and Messians on his side for not letting the other side win, d) still had a number of powerful demons at his side, e) his policy of not taking any shit from the Center meant that the Center didn't have to worry about 'undesirables' and could focus their time and funds on more important things, and f) he knew Vahalla the best anyways.

Eventually, Center decided that they had gained enough influence to assassinate him without retaliation. They knocked him out with sleeping gas, stole his COMP, and then blew up the cave he was in. Even though he was wounded, he survived the explosion. He spent days wandering the cave, delirious from thirst and hunger. He remembered thinking that he couldn't take it anymore, but then everything blanked out.

And then he woke up in his room. It was a bit like the Pensives exiting Narnia, sans wardrobe and plus number one cliché. His COMP was on his desk. He checked his computer, which had no record of Stephen's emails, and his mother was still alive.

Kazuya wanted to believe that everything was a dream, so he didn't bother to check for signs. Still, they kept on popping up. Besides the fact that he remembered everything up until his agonizing death by thirst, he quickly found that he managed to jump to the position of 'most fit person' in gym class, that everyone who ever tried to pick a fight with him suddenly had very easily breakable bones, and that he couldn't see any girl in his year attractive without seeing them as younger than his eldest grandchild. The fact that the date had jumped ahead over thirty years also qualified. Also, he couldn't remember the names of his classmates, or even what book they finished a week ago. He was forced to admit that it wasn't a dream when Pascal started talking to him.

Pascal told Kazuya everything that happened after his death, including the fact that his successor was the woman called Madam, the Coliseum having murder be a normal part of its operation [2], the coming of the Messiah (who was a weird kid named Hawk who turned out to be Aleph), and then Valhalla being swallowed by Abaddon, which was weird because the last time he checked, Abaddon were small enough to fit inside most buildings. Aleph let Pascal join him for a while, before fusing him with another demon. It was usually a roulette of which demon's mind became dominant [3], and Pascal lost. He then woke up with Kazuya, back in his original husky body. That is, he was a Siberian husky instead of a lion thing that Kazuya was pretty sure was better described as 'Chimera' than 'Cerberus'; Pascal wasn't very fat. [4]

The next thing that Kazuya did was try to look up Aoi in the phone book. Except he didn't know her surname. She never told him before the nukes hit because she was afraid that her family would be targeted if they were overheard, and she forgot after she reincarnated. If Gotou couldn't find her among all the other girls named Aoi in Japan, there was no way that Kazuya could. Even worse, Kazuya wasn't even sure if she would remember him at all. Death didn't stop her, but in this timeline, they never met.

Given that Kazuya's stash of weapons still existed, along with the Demon Summoning Program and all of his demons, Kazuya figured that he had to fight something sooner or later. When absolutely nothing happened, Kazuya decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and started to enjoy a world where he wasn't responsible for anything other than himself.

"And it's been like this for two years," Kazuya finished. "Any questions?"

"Why would you name your city after the afterlife of eternal fighting in one of the few religions that did not believe that their gods would live forever?" asked Soma. "If you're aiming for a peaceful haven, that just sounds weird."

"Guy has a point," said Naoki.

Kazuya grunted. "Look, it's because-"

Kazuya and Naoki both did a double take. "How long have you been standing there?!" shouted Kazuya. Next door, someone yelled at him to be quiet.

Soma let out an irritated sigh. "How did you not notice me? You looked straight at me. You stared at my bare chest!"

"Yay, I'm not the only one who likes going around shirtless!" said Naoki.

"I was changing out of a wet shirt!" snapped Soma. "Julius's bath gets freezing. To answer your question, I came in when you were talking about how you're a cannibal."

Both Kazuya and Naoki's jaws dropped. "So…"

"You're a demon and a demon summoner," said Soma. "It's fine; I'm not one to judge," he added, raising his hands. "I'm the soul devouring reincarnation of Count Dracula, who is totally not Vlad the Impaler. And all I want is a normal life."

Kazuya gave Soma a wary glance, but Naoki whistled. "That sounds much more interesting than my story."

"What are you, exactly?" asked Soma.

"I'm a normal guy who was turned into a demon by Lucifer and then asked to kill a lot of demons with skulls for faces and steal their light fixtures," said Naoki. "But you go first."

"All right, then," said Soma. "Remember that eclipse last year? The first one of the twenty first century?"

Kazuya's brow furrowed. "I thought that the first one was in-"

"I don't interrupt you, you don't interrupt me," said Soma. "I'll take questions afterwards. So yes, the first total solar eclipse of the twenty first century was in September of last year…"

After running through Castlevania, Soma had lost all of his souls. Well, most of them. It later turned out that the Galamoth soul was still with him, but since it was on all the time, he completely forgot about that one. He figured at the time that by destroying Chaos, he lost Dracula's power. He was still his reincarnation, but he no longer had the Power of Dominance. For several months, he treated the run as just another event in his life that happened, but didn't really affect the rest of it.

And then in early March, he had to run through Celia's castle. He was thankful that he had college entrance exams over with. Unlike the last time, Soma knew that he would probably get attacked eventually, so he kept a tighter grip on his souls. After school ended, he started getting curious about using them, resulting in odd shenanigans. His high school roommate started calling him to ask about his diet and if he was too poor to afford real food.

"And I just came back from learning how the Mirror World works inside Julius Belmont's bathtub," finished Soma. "Now you can ask your questions. Yes, Naoki?"

"Why do you have two surnames?"

Soma facepalmed. "My mother is Japanese and my father is Spanish; I was born in Spain but raised in Japan, I moved to Spain for junior high school, I came back to Japan for an exchange program in high school, and now I'm in a Japanese college. Cruz is my legal surname, but the Japanese form is Kurusu. Any relevant questions?"

"I'm pretty sure that 2035 was not the first total solar eclipse of the century," said Kazuya.

Soma responded by looking up 'solar eclipses of the 21st century' on his phone. Every page disagreed with Kazuya. Normally, Kazuya didn't agree with the majority and instead did what he thought was right, but he decided to concede the point the exact dates of celestial events.

"That's still really weird," said Kazuya. "I distinctly remember doing a report on them in grade school."

"Maybe it's because you're from an alternate dimension?" suggested Naoki.

"Might be," said Kazuya.

"No more questions?" asked Soma.

"What's your major?" asked Naoki.

"Law," said Soma. "I know, evil lawyer-"

"Aha!" shouted Naoki. "Only the most evil vampires major in law!"

Soma and Kazuya just stared. "I actually understood that reference," said Kazuya.

"I'm not a vampire, just the reincarnation of one," said Soma, who had no idea why a vampire would study law.

"Never mind, then," said Naoki. "You have something to say, Kazuya?"

"So you're basically enslaving the souls of dead monsters," said Kazuya flatly.

"Well… yes," said Soma, a bit startled at the sudden shift in personality.

"At least I got their consent before killing them by fusion with other demons," said Kazuya. "I did think of them as fusion fodder, but at least it wasn't a one sided contract."

"Technically, I didn't even have their consent half the time," said Naoki. "Some were practically drunk when they agreed. That's why you shouldn't drink and forge contracts with demons."

"You're kind of like a reverse Faust," said Kazuya. "He got powers by giving his soul; you get powers by taking the souls of others."

"That's more like a non-reverse Mephistopheles, isn't it?" said Naoki.

Soma coughed. He probably wasn't thinking about it before, and he was suddenly forced to confront an uncomfortable level of moral compromise. "Are you done, or can we listen to Naoki now?"

Kazuya and Naoki shook their heads, so Naoki began his story.

"So last year, the world was destroyed… you're not going to interrupt me?"

"Obviously, the world still exists, so it couldn't have stuck," said Soma. "Go on."

"All right then," said Naoki, a bit disappointed. "So my two friends and I went to visit my teacher in the hospital…"

Naoki's life changed completely after resetting the universe. It wasn't just the fact that he cheated on his exams by making the universe (and university, haha) accept that he got perfect scores; it was… well, everything.

The first thing he did was try to block the memory of the Vortex World. He broke off contact with Chiaki and Isamu because he couldn't stand seeing them and remembering what they did. They saw each other every day in class (plus, Isamu lived next door to him in the high school dorms), but Naoki always brushed off their attempts at conversation. They did worry about him, but they were soon distracted by college entrance exams. Naoki maintained a healthy relationship with Ms. Takao.

That would have been fine, except Naoki had other matters to deal with other than his relationships. He had gotten pretty good at fine-tuning his massive demonic strength for things like opening doors and holding eggs, but sometimes he was careless.

"I used to persuade bullies not to beat me up by giving them things, but after getting annoyed with demons not giving me binding contracts for that, I suddenly saw it as grossly unfair," said Naoki. "So I tried asserting myself, so they tried to teach me a lesson. The next thing I knew, there was a knife stuck in my throat, my hands were ripping out someone's large intestine, and I was kneeling in a pool of gore. The only survivor was screaming his head off. I healed them just in time. If that guy didn't wake me up, they would have died. You know how in manga the delinquents follow the guy who beats them in a fight? That's not true. They called the cops on me. They actually called the cops on the guy they tried to mug. They admitted that they were mugging me, even. I was detained for a while, but they let me out on lack of evidence. Daisuke clearly didn't have a hole the size of my fist in his chest."

Soma and Kazuya were speechless. Soma was determined to not be like Dracula by refusing to fight humans, and when it was inevitable, trying to get them to surrender. Kazuya had a higher kill count than the average soldier before he was old enough to even enlist, but he justified himself by saying that it had to be done. Hearing Naoki talk about finding it hard to _not_ kill people was… disturbing, to say the least.

"I managed to get off, because they couldn't prove that they were injured, but it was a killer on my reputation," said Naoki. "Sure, I was the wimp and the gofer, but at least I was accepted. No one treated me like a ticking time bomb. After that, everyone thought that I was a serial killer. Whenever they thought I wasn't listening, they'd say that it's always the quiet ones. Whenever I asked them anything, they'd pretend they didn't hear me and just scamper off. Isamu and Chiaki's sympathy was even worse. The more I pushed them away, the more they were convinced that something was wrong with me. It's true, but I can't tell _them_ …" He choked.

"Have you considered therapy?" asked Soma.

Naoki shook his head. "Telling people about how I'm a demon is probably the worst thing I can do. Even if I left that out, confessing that I killed my classmates would get me arrested, patient confidentiality be damned."

"You told _us_ ," said Kazuya, not unkindly.

Naoki's head suddenly jerked up. "I did just tell you all my innermost feelings, didn't I? Wow, and here I thought that I was this super hardcore demon."

"I killed my best friends," said Kazuya suddenly.

Naoki and Soma both stared, eyes wide. "You didn't mention that," said Soma.

"I thought it was too personal," said Kazuya. He was staring right between Soma and Naoki, but he wasn't looking at anything. "I had three companions who journeyed with me. Aoi was the last. The first two were named Yoshio and Takeshi. Takeshi fused with a demon for power, and he joined the Cult of Gaea. Yoshio died, but God brought him back to lead the Messians. They both wanted their groups to rule Tokyo. I didn't. In the end, they stood in my way. I killed them."

Soma didn't know how to react in this situation, but Naoki nodded seriously. Soma could only sympathize; Naoki understood. Soma coughed. "Besides, well, being Dracula, I really don't have much to offer."

"That's good," said Naoki. "Being normal keeps the rest of us sane. At least, relatively normal."

"Never thought I'd hear that," said Soma. "But you've never seen me truly angry before. Yes, I was angry at you for stealing my underwear-"

"That was an accident," said Kazuya, putting up his mask quickly, speaking without a hint of shame in his voice. "I was looking for evidence that you were an assassin. I figured that your drawers would be the best place to look."

"Too bad, everything's hidden inside my coat," said Soma, taking out a giant sword, a gun, and-

"How the hell did you fit an entire cake inside your jacket?" Kazuya had expected Naoki to ask that, but since Naoki didn't, he had to.

"You know, I never asked myself that," said Soma. "I'd always have just enough space for one more thing. The fact that I could carry around piping hot tea without it spilling or even getting lukewarm should have tipped me off."

"Maybe it's because you're the reincarnation of a vampire, which is a type of demon?" suggested Naoki. "I mean, after I became a demon, I suddenly had the power to store things in spatial distortions." He waved his hand, and a soda appeared. "I woke up in the morgue with nothing but the clothes on my—there weren't even clothes on my back. I was just wearing a pair of shorts and shoes. My jacket and shirt were gone! Ha. But I really wanted change for a drink when I got to a vending machine, and pop! Exact change in my hand. Pity it was broken, though."

"That is ridiculous," said Kazuya. "I believe you, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous."

"So you survived a nuked Tokyo without a bag of infinite holding?" said Soma, taking out a gigantic axe and carefully cutting the cake into neat slices. "That's incredible. I couldn't even survive two hellish castles without this coat of mine."

"Actually, I didn't," said Kazuya. "See this computer? The Demon Summoning Program was originally a teleporter program. It can be used to store stuff in… somewhere. It doesn't work with living things. We tried with mice. They died, and no one could figure out how. They were still edible, which was good." [5]

Soma froze. The axe vanished into thin air, much to Kazuya's relief. "You ate mice?"

"We ate everything," said Kazuya. "We cooked demon meat."

"You cooked demon meat?" repeated Naoki.

"Are you squeamish, too?" asked Kazuya. "Then again, you're a demon too, so it would be cannib-"

"I didn't even bother to cook it half the time," said Naoki. "I just tore out the soft bits and dug in. That cookbook I bought has nothing on me!"

"…You win," said Soma, looking like he was trying hard not to throw up. "Don't say any-"

"Once, these angels ambushed me when I was starving, and instead of punching them, I grabbed one of them and took a bite out of her-"

Kazuya wasn't sure what happened, but one moment they were all sitting on their beds, and then Soma was standing next to Naoki with his arms folded. There was an apple shoved in Naoki's mouth. "Quit it!" snapped Soma. "Or do you want me to tell you about how I devoured the soul of a ghoul, which allows me to eat rotten and maggoty food with no side effects?"

Naoki took the apple out of his mouth. "How did you do that?"

"I can stop time," said Soma.

Naoki pointed at Soma. "So you're a law major vampire who can stop time! You've got to be evil!"

"I haven't actually done any evil acts," said Soma. "The worst thing I ever did as myself was indirectly make a guy commit suicide by beating him in a fight." When Kazuya raised an eyebrow, Soma quickly added, "It's not as bad as it sounds! Besides, he got better."

"Never mind about you being normal, we're all a bit twisted," said Kazuya.

"Did you really want someone to dump all your issues onto?" grumbled Soma. Then a pang of regret and revelation struck his face. "You couldn't," he said in a softer voice. "I have Mina. You have your dog, but he's _your_ dog, Kazuya. Naoki, you had no one. I'm sorry, you guys."

Naoki shrugged. "Talking to both of you made me feel better, actually. We should do this more often."

For a second, the three strangers felt kinship with each other. Naoki was the only one who wasn't human. Kazuya was the only one who wasn't their age. And Soma was the only one who had emerged from his ordeals without having to completely rethink morality. But all of them were alike.

"Did you just cut yourself more cake than us?" said Naoki.

"…Maybe," said Soma.

"Gimme!"

"No! I bought that cake!"

Kazuya sighed. This was going to be a long year.

OMAKE

"Kazuya?" asked Naoki late that night.

"I'm trying to sleep," grumbled Kazuya.

"I can't sleep with this on my mind," said Naoki. "It's just one question."

Kazuya sat up. "What is it?"

"Why do you curse in the name of hell?" asked Naoki. "I stopped after I became a demon. A demon shouting, 'Oh my God' is just strange, and I don't consider hell to be, well, worthy of cursing over. It's why I say darn and gosh all the time. It's annoying, since I want to save the real curse words for the next apocalypse, and all of the medium level curse words are religious. Saying 'sugar' and 'poot' all the time doesn't cut it."

"You do realize that 'darn' and 'gosh' were invented by children to avoid having their mouths washed out by their teachers?" said Kazuya. "Same with 'gee whiz.'"

"Oh, da—I mean, oh, crap," said Naoki. "At least I didn't go with 'By Jove.' I can't remember if I really offended the Greek/Roman gods by killing some of their number."

"Naoki, remember. We're speaking Japanese. We're not actually swearing by heaven and hell. Our culture isn't Christian enough. We're using Japanese swears."

Naoki stared. "Oh. That makes me feel much better. Yay, I don't have to hear anyone swear in the name of-"

Soma slammed open the door, shut it, and then yelled, "Dios Mio, Kazuya!" At least, he started with Kazuya's name. After that, he burst into a rapid stream of Spanish expletives, which, more than likely, contained many religious swears.

"You swear in Spanish?" asked Naoki.

Soma stopped to turn towards Naoki. "My father swears much more often than my mother, and I moved to Spain in middle school. Besides, they're much more satisfying. Anyways, Kazuya, GIVE ME BACK MY-"

"This is going to be a long year," moaned Naoki.

TO BE CONTINUED!

[1] The city and college are named Haruhata and Haruhata University respectively. Yes, I translated it directly from Spring and Field. Yes, I have no background in Japanese.

[2] Changes between SMT 1 and 2: I doubt that blood sports are good for the postapocalyptic reconstruction environment, so I doubt that Kazuya endorsed them. Fighting tournaments are good, but killing is counterproductive.

I thought at first that the six statues in the Coliseum meant that the tournaments were a recent invention (especially since you meet a bunch of the former champions), but then I read that Okamoto fought against Feather Adonis (also, Haneda was Feather Adonis, but since he's hanging around in Valhalla even after his business went bust, I don't think he can go to the Center anymore). So now it's revised. I say that SMT2 takes place more than 50 years after SMT1, and Valhalla was completed 30 years after SMT1. 20 to 30 years is a decent time frame for there to be seven champions, if the championships take place every few years.

There's a guy who says that tournaments are becoming less frequent, which would imply that they're scheduled often enough for him to notice. I think that while the championships are every few years, there are lots of fights year round. Gladiators win points by winning and taking their opponents' points, and then the eight people with the most points by the time of the Championships are sorted into a standard eight person matchup. Aleph was behind by a few years, but caught up by fighting lots of people and edged into the top 8.

Wikipedia says that the idea for the gap years between SMT1 and 2 was compromised as 'several decades' after Kaneko wanted to make it 10 years but someone else wanted 100 years. Megaten wiki says that it took at least 30 years for Valhalla and the Factory to be completed. At the start of the game, there's a news broadcast about a 78 year old man who worked for 50 years. Since starting work at 28 seems a bit late for the apocalypse, I think that that old man didn't get a chance to work until then; he was an apocalypse survivor and scrounger until they started to rebuild right after SMT1. That's my justification for saying that SMT2 started about 50 years after SMT1.

The remake has a scene where Alfred says that he worked for Kazuya when he was young, which implies that Kazuya is around his age. Alfred looks in his sixties. I decided on Kazuya being in his sixties because it seemed like a reasonable number, and I said that he can't fall in love with any girl his age because he sees teenagers as his grandchildren's peers. On a side note, I think that it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that the Hero died not that long before SMT2.

Quick summary of from the timeline that I didn't know existed: Right after SMT1, the survivors of Tokyo formed a new government. The floodwaters mostly receded by then. Because the fair government allowed legal social mobility, the Messians took over and made it a theocracy, cracking down on all opposition. Then they made Tokyo Millennium on the old Basilica, and then they made Valhalla and the Factory. Lots of people started migrating to Tokyo Millennium because the outside world was practically uninhabitable, which leads to the present.

I'm a bit skeptical on how word of mouth got out about Tokyo Millennium, but if there are robots running around, telecommunications shouldn't be that hard.

My last draft was more or less the same, except I said that the Messians made their own government instead of taking over the old one. I also said that Kazuya couldn't find anyone outside of Japan because it was too far to travel.

[3] Demon sentience and fusion: I took a cue from Devilman, which I feel was the inspiration for demon fusion. The fight with Siren mentioned that when two demons fuse, only one is dominant.

[4] Chimera/Cerberus: Yes, I know that the designers consciously took a cue from the author of Digital Devil Story, and this isn't a jab at them.

[5] Demon Summoning and Item Summoning: The Digital Devil Story novels say that the program works by translating summoning rituals into program commands. That makes sense, but the SMT version says that Stephen accidentally summoned a demon while making a teleporter. So now the SMT Demon Summoning Program is a modified teleporter. It tracks the location of the demon inside the Abyss, and teleports it to and from the user's location. I gave the program infinite item storage as well, because otherwise you'd be carting around piles of weapons while fighting demons. Item storage was originally a scrapped program for the teleporter, but it was too useful to toss and was tweaked. The teleporter was originally made by having someone move from their starting point to a storage dimension, and moving from the storage dimension to their destination, but the storage dimension was unfit for human habitation. The end result for the teleporter made a tunnel appear from the start and end points.

Even thought the game models don't reflect this, I made Demi Fiend Naoki Kashima short and scrawny (prior to becoming a demon) because I consider him to be the physically strongest character in this story and I think it's funnier if he's smaller.

Even though the names come from different sources, the Hero is Kazuya, the Heroine is Aoi, the Law Hero is Yoshio, and the Chaos Hero is Takeshi. I chose the ones I liked best.

Guess which infamous evil vampire Naoki is referring to. The law major vampire.

Also, while Naoki's hometown is Inaba, he went to high school somewhere in Tokyo.

Changes from the other fic: Kazuya, Naoki, and Soma all know about each other's powers. Also, the events of Aria and Dawn are closer together. The eclipse of Aria took place in the September of 2035, in Soma and Mina's third year of high school. Soma had his birthday in October and Dawn of Sorrow took place in March (technically still winter), so while he's 19 and the year is 2036, he's still in high school (if 19 is too old for third year high school in Japan, let's say that it's because he moved and got held back in school due to cross country kerfuffle). The introduction of Dawn does claim that a year passed; even though about six months passed, it's a new year. In the other fic, Dawn took place in December of 2036, and the story took off right after he came back to college. The Ghoul soul and its applications were tested a bit earlier, and the two people Soma bet with were his high school dorm roommates. The Paranoia soul was tested the day they moved in.

Also, I moved the date of Nocturne back a year because I misunderstood something. Chiaki mentions that she's worried about graduation, which made me think that it was the end of the school year. But Hikawa says that it's April, which is the start of the school year. I don't remember making any dates, but the bit about the universe reset making the 'present' skip to after exams was made with the end of the year in mind. So now, Nocturne happened during the April of 2035 instead of whenever I placed it. The day when Naoki, Isamu, and Chiaki visit Ms. Takao is now on the exact same date instead of several weeks afterwards. I thought that it was the end of the year because the three of them know Ms. Takao pretty well, but Japanese schools have teacher go up with the same classes.

I was this close to making Kazuya, Tatsuya, and Katsuya separated siblings by divorce because Kazuya only has a mother, the Suou brothers only have a father, and there was an interview where Kazuya's parents were said to be separated… but then I realized that it would really screw up the sibling dynamic. The Suou brothers' father went to prison, and if their mother is still alive, most likely had to live with her. If Kazuya's mother is their mother, then the three brothers would probably be close enough for Katsuya at least to mention Kazuya. Making them cousins makes them distant enough. SMT Hero and the Suou brothers are related because I was new to the fandom, I'd mistake Kazuya and Tatsuya. Please don't hit me for that.

Another minor thing is that Kazuya started the first game at the age of 16, not 15. This is because Apocalypse's Diamond Realm DLC shows all five main characters alongside each other with the same art style. I chalked up the age disparity to differing art styles at first, but not anymore. I think that everyone looks older than Nanashi, and Flynn looks like the eldest (though it might have to do with living a life of hard labor). Naoki is firmly established to be a third year high school student as above, and Aleph is less than two years old (I'd say he's intended to be 19, though). Kazuya is the only one who can be affected in this case. I think of Nanashi as just turning 15, and Kazuya has been 16 for more than a few months. Plus, I think of the first SMT game as taking place over the course of over a year (from the hero's perspective).

As I mentioned above, the Demon Summoning Program works differently now. I originally used Nakajima's version (turn every summoning ritual into a set of computer commands; the demons aren't stored inside the computer, but the rituals are), but now I made another version (the program teleports demons to the summoner's side; the demons still aren't stored inside, but their location and tracking data is) since Stephen and Nakajima had different encounters with demons. Nakajima sought them out with recorded rituals and built the program based on those. Stephen accidentally summoned one with a teleporter, and modified the teleporter to summon them.


	2. Chapter 2: Home Ownership Troubles

I like how the 'after the end factions' dynamic of SMT isn't always the same. I think that the first game is the most realistic, in that there are many different factions with a changing political landscape. It seems more like they're mostly concerned with survival as opposed to dominance, and it seems more open than just two sides. The Messians and the Gaeans come across more like actual religions than political entities at first. The second game shows what it's like after the place gets settled down. And it shows that the technology of the future actually improved. The third game has everyone knowing what they have to do to rule the world, and they're very clear about their goals. The fourth and fifth games have the idea that everyone's settled down, except unlike the victorious Messians in 2, no one actually won.

I don't that the Messians and the original Lucifer-worshipping Gaeans would get any followers in IV and IVA's Tokyo because the situations are too different. SMTI has a wide open world where you get rumors of places where the grass is greener (like Roppongi). IV and IVA have an enclosed world where telecommunication infrastructure still exists and everyone knows that there aren't really any better places to live. SMTI's environment where most information comes from the Messian broadcasts fosters support for the Messians (not to mention that they have an actual social support system), while the Gaeans have a strong following of contrarians who can also get traction from God nuking Tokyo. IV and IVA have angels attacking the people who dug Naraku to get a better life for everyone, and everyone knows about that. They even call the war God's Plan. I don't have as much of an argument for why no one in IV supports Lucifer, other than that no demons are willing to work with the humans to foster the idea. Also, the alignments were cooked up by humans in SMTI, as opposed to the angels and demons making them in SMTIV and IVA.

Actually, I like it when the game acknowledges small things like how humans live after the apocalypse. I and II note that humans still have real entertainment in casinos and discos, and that the apocalypse hasn't stopped people from building new and beautiful things like the Basilica and Madam's Mansion. Minors still can't drink in I, which I find hilarious. IV actually talks about food, makes scavenging an everyday thing, and shows that children are still growing up in the cities. Apocalypse is the best in this regard, in that it talks about how everyone's eating demons, they made an app for dead hunters, the Hunter Association has power because the fetch quests make them so important, it explains that no one runs out of bullets because enslaved demons turn scrap metal into more rounds, teenagers are told to leave their phones out when they die so they can be easily identified, and killing people will turn others against you. While Apocalypse can get cliché at times, I still really like it. The cliché of the father not wanting the daughter to go out into the world because it's dangerous works out because he's right. It shows that a wandering horde of demons can kill you right in front of the gates of your hometown.

Apocalypse and IV have the most active faceless human NPCs with the Hunters (they're actually doing offscreen missions and guarding places), but they also come across as being the most sheeplike. The blind faith that Flynn will solve all of their problems doesn't seem like humanity taking their destiny into their own hands as much as putting it into the hands of someone else. Even though they're horrible people, Ozawa and Tayama seem to best embody the idea of humans taking control. Aleph and Flynn may both get the same 'hero' treatment by civilians, but Aleph gets a pass because he's the Messiah and the people of the Center were brainwashed (the real life way) into thinking that he'd solve all their problems.

I took a look at the Apocalypse original designs for the characters, and I like Toki's old design. It doesn't fit her character, but if they made a character based on her old design, I'd like to see her.

More Castlevania next chapter.

EDIT: In response to reader feedback, I decided to be explicit about who's who in the chapter. Before, the narration didn't show anyone's name until the end because the viewpoint character didn't know anyone and none of the protagonists called anyone else by name. I wanted to make it mysterious, but there are too many people for it to work without it getting confusing. So now the characters refer to each other by name with one exception.

Also, even though this is the first appearance for many characters, I don't consider any of them to have been formally introduced. They're more like early cameos or teasers that will have real introductions later and I don't expect anyone to remember them.

Additionally, the surname of the viewpoint character has been changed from Makimura to Kawamoto, because there will be a later OC with the surname Makimura, and it suits her better than the one-off viewpoint character.

How a Former Cult Leader Lost His Fourth Job

"Attention!"

All chatter stopped. The secret government agents turned to face their superior, Special Agent Kawamoto. Agent Lily, the newest member, quickly stood to attention like he was told to do every time, but slowly realized that he was the only one standing because they were in a moving vehicle. With a face red underneath his helmet, he sat down and buckled in, accompanied by the laughter of his comrades.

"I will now begin the briefing of Hermes Squad's latest mission," said Special Agent Kawamoto. "We will be performing an extraction on a suburban house."

The squad members nodded, knowing that this was all the background they were going to get. Hermes Squad was never trusted with any more information than required. On the whole, the members were cutthroats and criminals. No normal person ever joined their ranks.

"Most of you will be guarding the perimeter," said Special Agent Kawamoto. "Don't let anyone escape. The rest of you will infiltrate the house. You will restrain everyone in the house and bring them all into one room. As you do not know who we are abducting, you are not allowed to kill anyone."

The squad members looked at each other.

"Agents Archer, Rock, and Devil will be breaking in through the back door," said Special Agent Kawamoto, using the codenames. "Agents Wolf, Lily, and Chaos will accompany me through this window, in the western corner of the house. Agents Cowboy, Ninja, you'll go through the front door. You all will gather everyone in a common area. Everyone else will be guarding the perimeter. Understood?"

"Aye!"

"After gathering everyone, I will point out the person we are abducting. In event of my death, kidnap everyone in the house. We arrive in five minutes."

"Don't jinx it!" called out Agent Rock. She turned to Agent Lily. "You all right, newbie?"

"I'm fine," said Agent Lily.

Agent Rock shrugged. "If you can't take the heat, get out. Don't hold us back."

"I'm fine," said Agent Lily. "It's just… have you ever gotten the feeling that something very bad is about the happen?"

The other agents nodded gravely. "Kid, we get that all the time," said Agent Crow. "But you can't just quit every time you get that feeling."

Agent Lily nodded skeptically. It was widely considered that being able to join Hermes Squad was the crowning achievement of badassery (at least among Hermes Squad members), mostly because the training was grueling even for former… well, no one knew what anyone else did before joining up. But the people who were willing to mention that they were in the military said that they thought the physical exams would be a piece of cake compared to basic training. Then Special Agent Kawamoto said that that was why it was called _basic_ training, and threw a book on knots at them before telling them that she would be tying them up and shoving them out of a moving airplane sometime that week.

Still, they couldn't help but think that Agent Lily was a bit soft. He passed all the training with surprisingly good results, and anyone who tried to haze him ended up stitching themselves up with their nondominant hand. But he was a horrible shot with a gun, tended to second guess orders, and tended to lower morale when he spoke. They got the feeling that he was too nice for dirty business.

"We're here," announced Special Agent Kawamoto. "Move out!"

The agents dispersed into their assigned groups. Agent Lily faltered for a moment when he saw the house. It was an average sized two story home, but had a bigger than average lawn. There was a car and two motorcycles parked in the garage, next to some bicycles.

"First time housebreaking?" asked Agent Wolf.

"Yes," said Agent Lily honestly.

"Get used to it," said Agent Wolf. "Hoist us up, okay?"

Agent Lily reluctantly pushed up the not small Agent Wolf up to climb to the second floor, and then Agent Chaos and Special Agent Kawamoto. Agent Chaos pulled up Agent Lily.

The four agents found themselves inside a bathroom. Special Agent Kawamoto specifically chose the bathroom because it was the one room in the house that she could tell was occupied from the outside; no one who wasn't blind used the bathroom without turning on the lights. She silently opened the door and looked out into the hallway. No one was there, but something was strange.

Special Agent Kawamoto motioned Agent Wolf to follow her and cover her back. Agent Chaos and Agent Lily were to secure the exit point.

Special Agent Kawamoto quickly realized what she thought was strange. The hallway was much longer than the exterior dimensions could accommodate. While some hallways were shorter than they looked due to depth manipulation, closer analysis showed that it was not an optical illusion. It was odd, but not worth distracting her subordinates.

Special Agent Kawamoto had expected to see many unmarked doors, but the bedrooms had slips of paper with the names of the residents tacked on the doors. That made tracking down the Cyber Hell scientist her bosses were after that much easier.

Soon enough, she found the name she was looking for. The door was unlocked. She signaled to Agent Wolf to join her, and they burst into the room.

It was empty. Well, it was full of detritus that showed that someone lived there. There were books on the shelves, an old handheld game console and video games in a drawer, clothes in the others, an old satanic metal rock band poster on the wall, and a gigantic pretty rock and glass collection on a side table. But the bedsheets were clean, there was no dirty clothing anywhere, and there was a thin lair of dust on everything.

"Target is not here," signed Special Agent Kawamoto.

Someone tapped both Agent Wolf and Special Agent Kawamoto on the shoulder. They spun around, weapons drawn, to see an angry looking woman in pajamas. She was carrying a whip.

"Who are you, and why are you in my house?" the woman asked in a loud voice, before they could silence her.

Agent Wolf lunged at the woman, and was taken by surprise when she dodged. At least, dodging is pretty common in fights, but the woman dodged his knife with the barest amount of movement. She just turned her body so that it missed her by a hair's breadth. Most people overdo it when they dodge; that's not necessarily a bad thing, because moving back too much is better than moving back too little. But since most people know that, they get used to the large distance people move backwards and can get screwed up when people don't move. [1] The woman took advantage of his split second confusion and drove an uppercut into his solar plexus. Before he could recover, she attacked him with her whip.

Special Agent Kawamoto took advantage of the woman's distraction and shot her. The woman was hit in the chest, but she managed to lash at Kawamoto's gun arm with enough force to break it. That is, the woman whipped Kawamoto's gun arm so hard that Kawamoto's arm broke; the gun was somehow fine. Now that his captor was no longer whipping him, Agent Wolf stood up shakily.

"Two against one," growled Special Agent Kawamoto, picking up her gun in her left hand.

"Diarahan," the woman choked.

"What?" said Agent Wolf.

The woman struck Special Agent Kawamoto on her left shoulder, probably breaking it. Agent Wolf shanked her in the chest while her back was turned, and she backhanded him. He still managed to pull his knife out, which was exactly what you're not supposed to do after you've been stabbed.

"Screw secrecy," muttered the woman. "Mazion-"

There was a cry from downstairs. "Kazuya?" said the woman. She fled into the hallway, running way too fast for someone with a hole in her chest. "Wake up!" she shouted. "Intruders!" The agents heard her footsteps move down the stairs.

Stealth abandoned, Special Agent Kawamoto and Agent Wolf exited the target's bedroom. "Lily, go after her!" she barked, thankful that the new agent was convinced to change his codename from 'Rhododendron' to the easy-to-say-in-a-hurry 'Lily'.

"R-right Boss!" stammered the newbie agent, drawing his throwing knife and making chase.

"Why doesn't he just throw his knives at her?" asked Agent Chaos, but Kawamoto silenced him. She heard sheets rustling behind the doors.

"Hostiles incoming," she said, unable to sign.

One of the doors slammed open. All three agents turned to face it, but no one was there.

"Okay, that was creepy," said Chaos.

"Ooh, I'm a ghooost," said a voice behind all three of them.

The agents spun around quickly, weapons drawn. A ghostly-looking man was standing behind them. He was pale, white-haired, and had dark circles underneath his eyes. He would have been more frightening had he not been wearing heart-printed boxers. He was waving his arms in what he must have thought was a spooky manner, except he was cracking up. "Ooh, I'm a ghost," he said in a monotone interrupted by suppressed smiles. "I'm here to haunt you for… um… a generic ghost reason. Ooh…"

Agent Chaos rolled his eyes and pointed his hands at the ghost. Then his eyes widened. "My gun's gone!"

Special Agent Kawamoto realized too late that her gun was gone, too. While she couldn't use it with a broken right arm and a broken left shoulder, her enemies could use it on her.

"Ooh… I have cursed you to make your weapons vaniiiish…" said the ghost guy, with his hands behind his back. Then he choked on his laughter.

"Hey," said someone else from behind the group. "You're surrounded."

Special Agent Kawamoto looked around. While they were distracted by the weird guy in face paint, it seemed as if almost everyone else had come out of their rooms, armed. Some held guns, others swords. It seemed as if some of them didn't get the 'lethal weapons only' memo; there was a man with a golf club, a woman with boxing gloves, and another woman with steel shin guards. None of them were her target. "You do realize that half your weapons are illegal, right? Do you even know how to use a gun?"

"Yes," said a red haired woman.

"Not exactly," said a long haired man.

"My golf club is legal," said another guy.

"Isn't breaking and entering illegal?" retorted the ghostly man.

The mob devolved into chatter about what was going on. Most of them were upset about being woken up. Kawamoto didn't blame them.

"Hey, wasn't that Aoi who called the alarm?" said a guy holding a guitar case.

"Yeah, that was definitely her voice," said the woman with the armored shin guards.

"I think she went downstairs," said the woman with red hair.

"So why are you breaking into our house?" asked the long haired man nonchalantly. He didn't seem threatened by the situation at all.

"That is classified information," said Special Agent Kawamoto.

"See, we're not going to get anywhere," said the ghostly man, whose name was either Soma Cruz or liked sleeping in his room, judging by name on the room he was entering. "I'm going back to bed."

"Same here," said the guy with the golf club.

The mob of people dissipated until the only people left were the red haired woman, the long haired man with a moustache, and a red haired guy with a sword.

"Okay, that was strange," said the red haired woman.

"You're still our prisoners, by the way," said the guy with a sword.

"Really?" scoffed Agent Wolf.

"We're the ones with the guns," said the long haired man.

"We don't need guns to kick your asses," said Agent Wolf.

"No, you can't win against me even if you had guns," said the guy with a sword in a very matter of fact manner.

The woman and the long haired man stepped back. "Tatsuya, just because you're fine doesn't mean that we're not taking chances," said the woman.

"We'll just be over here," said the long haired man.

"What do you plan on doing with us?" asked Special Agent Kawamoto.

"We'll figure something out," said the woman.

"There are handcuffs in the hall closet downstairs," suggested the long haired man.

"Why do we have handcuffs in the closet?" asked the man named Tatsuya.

"Yes, why do you have handcuffs in the closet?" asked Agent Chaos.

"Ask Aoi," said the long haired man. "You two stay here with the prisoners. I'll get the handcuffs."

The long haired man walked towards the stairs, gun pointed at the agents the whole time. Then he went downstairs.

"Don't even think about ganging up on us," said Tatsuya. "You won't win."

Special Agent Kawamoto turned towards the woman. "Have you ever killed someone before?"

The woman remained silent.

"I take that as a no," said Kawamoto. "How would you feel, knowing that you took a life? It's too easy to kill someone with that gun of yours."

The woman started to sweat, but didn't answer.

"If I attacked you, then you'd shoot me in a heartbeat," said Special Agent Kawamoto. "I'd understand. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I'd understand. But I'm not going to attack you. I'm completely unarmed and at your mercy. How would you feel, knowing that you're going to kill someone who can't fight back? You can't kill me. You can't shoot me. The same goes to you," she added to Tatsuya. "You think that swords work like in anime, where you can hack at me all day before I die? That's not true. Cut me just right, and my death will be on your hands. I can't hurt you right now. You don't even know why I'm here. I could just be a burglar. I haven't hurt a single one of you. Would you really kill someone for breaking and entering?"

Neither of the agents' captors spoke. Tatsuya looked more disturbed than the woman. Special Agent Kawamoto walked backwards. Her men followed her, never turning their backs on the residents. "I mean you no harm," said Special Agent Kawamoto. It didn't matter what she said, as long as it wasn't a threat. She had to firmly establish that this was a living, breathing human in front of them. Showing her back would break that illusion and place a target. "I-"

The woman shot her in the leg, and then Tatsuya slashed at the chests of her comrades. The instructor inside of Special Agent Kawamoto criticized the woman for shutting her eyes as she pulled the trigger, not aiming for a lethal shot, letting her fear get the better of her, and firing with shaky hands, but noted that she handled the recoil better than most amateurs. Despite cutting shallow, Tatsuya used unnecessarily wide movements that were meant to draw power, but he drew faster than both agents could react and wasn't afraid of closing the distance. [2] Both of them looked as if they were more terrified than Kawamoto. Then the woman took in a deep breath. "It's all right," she said to herself. "I can fix this."

At that moment, the long haired man emerged to the top of the stairs. "All right," he said, holding up some fuzzy pink handcuffs. He saw the three dying agents, but didn't seem to be too concerned. "Three handcuffs. Come to the living room; looks like these aren't the only intruders."

"You've done it," said Kawamoto through the pain. "You've killed us. That's going to be on your head for the rest of your lives."

"No," said Tatsuya, as if he were trying to convince himself of something. "You're not the first person I've killed. You're not going to die."

"Eh, you'll be all right," said the long haired man, cuffing all of them.

"How the hell can you be so calm?" said the woman, giving the man an accusatory look in an effort to regain her moral dignity. "Hijiri, these people are dying!"

"You've never seen refugees skinned alive by one of their own," said the man named Hijiri. "That, or Aleph is rubbing off on me. Besides, if you hurry, they won't die." He turned to the agents. "Why are you here, anyways?"

"Why would we tell you?" snapped Wolf, voice ringed with pain.

"Are you all right?" asked the woman. It sounded as if was forcing herself to be nice.

"Does it _look_ like I'm all right!?" snarled Wolf.

"What are your names?"

"You know how when soldiers get captured, they're only obliged to say their name, rank, and serial number?" said Chaos.

"Is it serial number?" asked the woman. "I think it's something else."

"Why would we have a serial number?" said Special Agent Kawamoto. "We're not robots."

"I think it's just rank," said Wolf.

"I think it's rank and name," said the woman. "Wait, no, it's rank."

"But anyways, we're not even allowed to say any of that," said Chaos. "Why did you think that we'd spill?"

"Oh, that wasn't the point," said the woman. "I just wanted to have a talk so I could magically heal you. So you can march downstairs without succumbing to excessive blood loss."

Agent Wolf and Chaos looked at each other. Just a second ago, their guts were sliced open, but now there wasn't any sign on injury, not even on their clothes. "What the hell!?"

One of the doors opened up, revealing the ghostly man. "Ooh, it's because of ghooost magic!" he said, waving his fingers. "Now shush. Some people like sleeping!" He slammed the door shut.

Agent Wolf took this as the chance to howl as loudly as he could to spite him, but then the man with the golf club came out with a towel and gagged him.

The agents were marched downstairs, weapons pointed at them. The stairs were much longer than the exterior dimensions of the house could logically accommodate; it would make a great waterslide with just a few modifications. At last, they came to the living room. It had a window, a large fireplace with a fire that Special Agent Kawamoto could feel from the top of the stairs, a soft looking rug, and three couches. A man in green pajamas holding a sword was sitting on one, next to the whip-wielding woman who was shot earlier. Two teenage boys somehow managed to sleep through the ruckus, and were sharing a couch and blanket.

The other squad members who Kawamoto commanded to break in were all lying on the rug, handcuffed behind their backs and beaten. The sole exception was Agent Lily, who was handcuffed but was otherwise unharmed.

"Is that everyone?" the man in green asked the woman next to him.

"That's everyone I saw," said the woman who was shot. Her name was probably Aoi, judging by the conversations from earlier. While Special Agent Kawamoto didn't know for sure, it wouldn't hurt to assume in this case for the sake of clarity.

"So let's get started, then," said the man in green, pacing the room and tapping his hand with his sword. "None of you will tell us why you are breaking into our house."

"Damn right we didn't," said Agent Rock.

"Not even the truth serum worked," said the woman probably named Aoi, holding a bottle.

"That's vodka," said the woman with red hair.

"Close enough."

"If you were just going to rob us, that wouldn't require fanatical devotion and firearms," said the man in green. "So if you don't tell us who you are, we're just going to assume that you're a murderous cult or something, so we'll have to kill all of you."

"Wait!" the red haired woman called, dropping her gun in surprise (thankfully, it didn't go off). "Kazuya, you can't just kill people like this!"

"Mina. We have to," said the man named Kazuya. The lack of anger or glee in his voice was unsettling. "It's the safest option. Whoever these guys work for, if we just let them go, they're going to come back and-"

"We work for the Japanese government!"

The room went completely silent. Aoi gasped. The woman named Mina looked around with a furrowed brow. The man named Kazuya spun around, eyes wide. Tatsuya dropped his sword on his foot, blade down, but didn't seem to feel the pain. Hijiri gave a tiny smile before looking confused. Special Agent Kawamoto couldn't see her squad's expressions, but she had a good idea what they were.

Agent Lily had managed to stand up without using his hands, breathing heavily underneath his helmet. "We work for the Japanese government," he repeated in a quieter voice. "We're here to kidnap someone who lives here."

The first person to speak was Agent Rock. She stood up and shifted her weight for a disemboweling kick. "Lily, you-"

Quick as a flash, Tatsuya pulled his sword out of his foot and pointed it at Agent Rock's throat. "One more step and you're dead," he growled.

Agent Rock looked down at the sword, and then at the man's foot. "Dude, is your foot all right?"

Tatsuya grimaced. "No." Special Agent Kawamoto had to give him credit; he knew that he couldn't take his eyes off of Agent Rock even though he had just stabbed his foot and stupidly took out the sword.

"Agent Lily, you traitor," said Agent Ninja in a voice filled with venom.

"I'm not trying to save myself," said Agent Lily, scared but with a firm resolution. "I'm trying to save you."

Behind their helmets, the other agents rolled their eyes. "Yeah, right," said Agent Wolf, who managed to get the towel out of his mouth. "You're just interested in your own-"

"Don't you dare," growled a new voice. One of the sleeping teenagers was glaring at Agent Wolf. He was holding a cleaver, and his legs were coiled to spring. He turned to Agent Lily. "Go on. I'm right behind you."

Agent Lily gulped. "I live here," he said in a quiet voice. In a more confident voice, he said, "This is my home! These people are my family! That's the truth, all right! I never wanted to hurt anyone in this house!" Agent Lily walked over to one of the couches, sitting down with his back to the man with the sword. The man with the sword gently cut Lily's handcuffs into pieces.

The agents looked at Agent Lily and at Special Agent Kawamoto. "How could you not know he lives here?!" barked Agent Wolf. "You know his name. All the rooms were labeled!"

"My last name isn't Kashihara," said Agent Lily. "And my first name isn't exactly uncommon. You might have missed it."

"What is your-"

"I'll never tell," said Agent Lily.

"So why are you breaking in, anyways?" asked Hijiri, once again out of idle curiosity.

"I don't know; they don't tell us this," said Agent Lily, taking off his helmet and breathing hard. "We're kidnapping someone. I don't know who. Only she knows." He pointed at Special Agent Kawamoto.

All eyes were on Special Agent Kawamoto. "I am not telling you," she said.

"Then you're going to die," said the teenage boy.

"Doesn't matter. We're not afraid to die."

Aoi grabbed Kawamoto. "Don't. Treat. Your. Life. As. Disposable." She let go. "That said, we're not afraid to kill you."

"If you die, then your mission won't be fulfilled," said Mina, trying to keep the fear of guilt out of her voice.

"We don't need mercy," said Special Agent Kawamoto.

"Come on!" cried Agent Lily. "I don't want any of you to die! We're a special squad. They wouldn't assign a mission to us if they could pass it to someone else! It would take tons of red tape to find someone else who could do it! That defeats the purpose of Hermes Squad!"

"Fine then, if you mean so much to my—if you mean so much to our friend, we won't kill any of you," said Kazuya. "But, we can't exactly let you leave, either."

"We can break out-"

"Dump them in the dungeon?" suggested the teenage boy.

"We don't have a dungeon," said Aoi.

"Yes, you do," he said. "Northernmost second floor bathroom, secret passage behind the mirror, climb two ladders, go down two ladders, take a left at the first fork, a right at the second, take another left, taking a right later teleports you to a pair of doors, go through the door marked B, and then the one marked A. Then you'll be in the dungeon. Oh, and it's completely pitch black. And if you mess up once, you'll fall down a pitfall that dumps you in the swimming pool."

Kazuya and Aoi moaned in unison. "Did you really have to make it so dark!?" groaned Aoi.

"What's with you and pitfalls?!" groaned Kazuya.

"Not another teleporter," groaned Hijiri.

"Why can't you just take a flashlight?" asked Mina.

"A what?" asked the teenage boy.

"You know, a flashlight," she said. "Metal sticks with a lightbulb at the end?"

"Yeah, why didn't I think of that?" said Kazuya.

"Because all the batteries and lightbulbs were scrapped to fill the Basilica, remember?" said Aoi.

"Oh, yeah, right," said Kazuya.

"So it appears that we are at an impasse," said Mina. "You want to complete your mission with your lives intact. We don't want you to kidnap any of us. We also can't let you go."

"I want to know who you're kidnapping and why," said Hijiri.

"And I don't want anyone here to die," added Agent Lily. "I'd also rather not be court-marshaled."

"Forget court-marshaled, we'll lynch you," growled Agent Wolf.

"Negotiation time?" suggested Kazuya. "I'll give you 1000 yen each if you go back and say that the mission is a failure."

"2500 pieces of Magnetite for the story," called Hijiri.

"75% of my life to not kill this guy?" suggested the teenage boy.

"Um…er…" stuttered Agent Lily.

Tatsuya took out a microphone from out of nowhere and made motorcycle noises.

"All right, I'll throw in another 5000 yen," said Kazuya.

"Can I have some?" asked Agent Lily.

"No."

"Do you really think that we're bribable?" asked Special Agent Kawamoto.

"Yes," said half the people on the couches in unison.

"Why are you bribing us?" asked Special Agent Kawamoto.

"To give up your mission," said Kazuya.

"Ha!" said Agent Wolf. "We never give up!"

It occurred to Special Agent Kawamoto that none of their captors felt threatened by her squad. It was a strange feeling, and she did not like it. "Who here would actually get the Japanese government on their case?" Mina said to herself.

"I pay all my taxes," said Hijiri quickly.

"I've never done anything illegal in my life," said Mina. "Well… unless there's a law against witchcraft. Is there one?"

"I don't even live here," said the teenage boy.

"Doesn't stop you from using the couch," muttered Aoi. "Still, that's a good question. Maybe we can work something out if we know who it is. At the very least, we can warn him or her."

"It can't be any of you, or else the boss would order us to grab you and run," said Agent Lily. "If the boss saw our target, she'd tell us right away to get them. Since she hasn't, I can only assume that she's waiting for him or her to show up."

"By that token, she couldn't have seen the target upstairs, or else she would have made a grab for them," added Mina. "And I'm pretty sure that everyone came outside."

"And it's most likely someone who lives here," said Hijiri. "That leaves… Yoko and Naoki."

Special Agent Kawamoto knew that her face didn't betray anything.

"And since we know that Yoko flew to another country on a public airline, you people can track her through the passenger list," said Mina. "You'd try to start there and search for her from the airport, not trace her steps. And if she managed to evade you, she'd warn us before you got here."

"So that leaves him," said Agent Lily. "Boss, is the target named Naoki Kashima?"

Special Agent Kawamoto was silent.

"Naoki's been gone for weeks," added Agent Lily. "He's a vagabond. He has a room here and he mooches every now and then, but only when he's around."

"You saw his room, didn't you?" said Aoi. "It was cleaned right after he left." Her eyes widened. "Of course! It has to be Naoki! His room was the only one you went into! You came out of the bathroom, looked for the bedrooms by name, and ignored the rest."

Special Agent Kawamoto remained silent.

The teenage boy grinned. It was creepy seeing such a bloodthirsty expression on a child. "I'll take that as a yes."

"What were you doing up that late?" asked Hijiri.

"I had to use the bathroom," said Aoi.

Special Agent Kawamoto stood up. "There's no point in hiding it anymore," she said. "Our mission was to look for Naoki Kashima. Prove that he's not here."

Now that they had extracted a confession, the atmosphere changed to something softer.

"That's going to be difficult," said Mina. "The easiest way to prove that someone's not here is to show that they're somewhere else, but we don't know where he is."

"There's always the possibility that we're lying, but if you search the house, you won't find a trace of him," said the teenage boy. "Go ahead. Search all you want. When you can't find him, you'll fail your mission, but it won't be your fault."

"Nanashi, you have no right to do that," said Kazuya with an edge to his voice. Kawamoto sensed a long argument and a truce that was only called after both sides were about to fall asleep at the table. "That said, I agree."

No one else seemed convinced. "Is this really a good idea?" asked Mina.

"We can't do anything else," said Kazuya.

"We don't have to kill them or hold them prisoner, Naoki isn't kidnapped, and we get them to leave for good," said Hijiri. "They follow their mission instructions. They won't be able to complete it, but only because Naoki's gone."

"But we'd be letting strangers trespass on our home," said Mina.

"They've already done that, and this will get them out faster," said Hijiri.

"Now you know how I feel," Kazuya said to the unfortunate boy whose parents decided to name Nanashi.

"You can search the house, on three conditions," said Aoi sharply. "First, you will not hurt a single person in this house. We won't hurt you as long as you don't hurt us. Second, at least one of us will be in the rooms when you search. We don't want you to destroy the place or steal anything. Third, if you cannot find Naoki, you will leave and never break in here again."

"Unless you get another lead," added Mina.

"Scratch that. If you ever come back, you will make an appointment beforehand."

"And-" Tatsuya and Mina said in unison. "You go first," said Tatsuya.

"And you won't use any evidence you find in this house that is not related to Naoki to arrest us or call any kind of law enforcement," said Mina. When everyone stared at her, she said, "What? Don't you think that all the guns and ammo all over the place is at least a little bit illegal?"

"The hell is wrong with this place?" said Agent Wolf.

Tatsuya raised his hand. "And J-"

"Don't say my name!" said Agent Lily quickly. "No one knows my real name."

"All right, this guy keeps his job."

"Absolutely not," said Special Agent Kawamoto. "My squad is expected to put the mission before all else. Agent Lily failed."

Agent Lily sighed. "Should have known. Back to the flower shop and playing darts."

"And you tell us why you want to kidnap the kid," added Hijiri.

"No can do," said Agent Rock.

"Darn it."

"Don't we get demands?" said Agent Rock.

"No, it doesn't work that way," said Hijiri.

"Please."

"Fine, come up with a set of demands, and we'll pick and choose," said Aoi. "We reserve the right to reject any of them. I'll get pen, paper, and the key to the handcuffs."

"Why do you have so many handcuffs?" asked Agent Ninja as the woman with the whip unlocked her handcuffs.

"Took a forging class," said Aoi. "I was good at them."

"So why are they fuzzy?"

"I already had the whip, so…"

The agents huddled together. "I'll write," volunteered Agent Devil.

"Kill Agent Lily."

"Explain how we're not dead after being attacked with a sword."

"Order a pizza."

"Order _two_ pizzas."

"Have us search in teams and give us radios so we can communicate."

"Radios? Why don't we use cell phones?"

"Yeah, why don't we have them in the first place?"

"In the event where we find our target, you will not interfere."

"I'll take that when you're done," said Aoi.

"In a second," said Agent Devil. When he finished writing down everything, he gave it to her.

"Hm… we won't give you your weapons back, but we'll leave all of ours here," said Aoi. "We're not killing anyone tonight, two dozen cell phones are expensive, we might as well let you go after Naoki if you find him, but no promises that he won't fight back, the explanation can wait… What kind of pizza?"

There was a brief clamor.

"Shut up or we're getting just cheese," said Aoi. Everyone went silent.

"I have more than two dozen cell phones," said Nanashi. He dug through his pockets and pulled out a large sack. "Here, take your pick."

Agent Wolf picked up a shiny red one. "Nice!" he said. "Brand new and everything!"

"Repaired, actually," said Nanashi.

"Where did you get a sack full of smartphones?" asked Mina.

"Ever been to Ginza?" asked Nanashi.

"I'm going to stop you right there," said Kazuya, looking both ill and angry.

Agent Wolf fiddled with his new toy. "Hey, this one used to belong to a…Subzero Nodon? Sucker doesn't know how to lock his phone properly. Here's the video recordings… 'Last confessions before I am horribly murdered by an omnicidal teenage psychopath?'"

Sixty seconds of listening to a man helplessly lamenting his fate later, Agent Wolf was crying. "…Never mind, not this one," said Agent Wolf, tossing it back into the sack.

"They're all like that," said Nanshi. "It was the best place to record their wills."

"You didn't delete the data?" asked Hijiri.

"No," said Nanashi.

"Then why aren't they locked?" When Nanashi gave him a blank look, Hijiri said, "You know how people put passwords on their phones so that people can't steal the data? And if someone gets the password wrong too many times, all the data is deleted?"

"Then how do you salvage the apps after they die if no one knows the password?" asked Nanashi.

"You don't," said Hijiri. "Everything's reset, and you have to buy all the apps back."

"Then what's the point of a smartphone if all the apps are gone?"

"I'm sorry, is this real?" said Agent Wolf. When everyone stared at him, he said, "You really think that point of having a phone is the apps? What happened to calling and texting?"

"Actually, yes," said Nanashi. "Isn't the point of having a phone is that you can use the De-"

"Nanashi, not here," said Aoi, cutting him off with a glare.

"You do realize that you can't actually use cell phones to call people without registering them," said Mina.

"Oh," said Nanashi. "Never mind, give them back. I just finished fixing all of them."

"How did they break?" asked Mina.

"You don't want to know," said Kazuya.

"Severe water damage," said Nanashi. "Just replace water with copper-filled water, and water with-"

"So never mind about the phones," said Aoi, glaring at Nanashi. "Yes, you can search in groups, we can order pizza for everyone, but we're not killing our friend or giving you your weapons back until we're done. Is that all right?"

"Fine," spat Special Agent Kawamoto.

Nanashi took the paper and wrote some more stuff on there. "All right, everyone sign this binding contract," he said. "No one attacks anyone, no ransacking or destroying the house, don't come back without calling ahead, don't arrest us, we'll order some pizzas, and if anyone breaks it their soul is forfeit immediately."

"What?" said Agent Chaos.

"Just sign it. Preferably in blood."

"Seriously?" said Kazuya. " _This_ is what you've resorted to?"

"It's the best deterrent I can come up with. It's instantaneous, nonlethal, and it'll work any time," said Nanashi. Kazuya kept glaring at him. "Fine, I'll give them back before they leave. Happy?"

"Let me see that," said Kazuya, grabbing the paper and making some modifications. "Okay, now this truce expires in 24 hours. Is that all right?"

There were some murmurs of approval.

"We are free to kill each other again 24 hours from now. Also, upon completing your search, you will have half an hour to exit the property (it's actually 35 minutes for safety reasons, but pretend it's 30) so that you can eat the pizza." He went into the kitchen and returned with a quill and a mug full of something red. He dipped the quill and signed it.

"I meant _your_ blood," said Nanashi.

"You didn't specify," said Kazuya. "What, goat's blood not good enough for you?"

Everyone signed it, some more disturbed than others. The Agents wrote down their codenames instead of their real names, but Nanashi didn't seem to care. Then they took a vote on toppings and ordered the pizza.

"Is this place where hell comes to outsource or something?" said Agent Wolf. "Do you work for the Devil? Is one of you the Devil?"

"Not even close," said Aoi, offended.

"You're really going to take our souls?" scoffed Agent Chaos.

"If you don't believe us, just try it," said Nanashi with a grin that better suited a shark than a child.

"Don't bait them," said Mina. "Does the truce apply to everyone who signed? Including us?"

"Yes, it should-"

Mina slapped her own face. "Okay, so that-" She slumped onto the floor.

"Her soul is now in my possession," said Nanashi, holding out his hand like he was begging for alms and looking very surprised. "I… really didn't know that would happen."

"Soma's going to kill you, you know," said Tatsuya.

"Been there, done that."

Agent Wolf rolled his eyes. "She's faking, ri-"

"Free hit," said Kazuya. "You can hit me, and I won't hit you back."

Agent Wolf punched him in the solar plexus. "Feel th-" He slumped to the floor.

"And now I have his soul," said Nanashi, putting out his other hand.

Agent Ninja checked his pulse and his eyelids. "He's out cold, but he's alive," she said.

"And I am returning his soul in three… two… one…"

Agent Wolf and Mina stood up. "Why am I so tall?" said Agent Wolf.

"Why am I so short?" asked Mina. Then they looked at each other and screamed. "You're me!" they screamed in unison.

Nanashi was speechless.

"Hit someone, quick!" said Aoi.

Mina in Agent Wolf's body smacked Nanashi in the ear. Agent Wolf in Mina's body punched Aoi in the nose. They both fell on the floor, and then sat back up.

"Are you in your own bodies?" asked Nanashi carefully.

"I think so," said Mina, looking at her hands and clothes.

"Good."

"You have a pretty good left hook, but I've just felt worse," Kazuya said to Agent Wolf.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" muttered Wolf.

"No."

"You have a pretty good arm, Mina," said Aoi, rubbing her nose. She gave Agent Wolf a death glare.

"You're the one who whipped me first," he said.

"I know. Doesn't stop me from being angry."

"Now that that little distraction is out of the way, let us proceed with our mission," said Special Agent Kawamoto. It was her job to keep her agents under control, and she wasn't going to go to pieces over a bit of voodoo. "We're going to round up everyone in the house down here, like our original plan. If we don't find anyone Kashima, we'll leave."

"If you're searching, I'll show you around the second floor," said Aoi.

"I'll do the basement," said Tatsuya.

"I'll get this floor, if Nanashi gets everywhere else," said Kazuya. "Everyone else stay here."

"Why am I getting everywhere else?" asked Nanashi.

"You're the only one who can remember how to get to the swimming pool without a cheat sheet."

"Point taken."

Hermes Squad arranged themselves into their original groups. "Wolf and I will be investigating this floor," said Special Agent Kawamoto. "Cowboy and Ninja, go to the basement. Archer and Devil, go to the second floor. Rock and Chaos, go wherever that kid takes you. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said Hermes Squad cheerlessly. Cowboy was slower to respond, which turned out to be because he was chosen for the 'truth serum' session.

"Lily, sit down. You're fired, remember?"

"Oh. Right."

Aoi placed her whip on the couch next to Lily, along with a miniature railgun. Tatsuya followed by putting his sword down. Kazuya dropped his sword and a minigun that he somehow managed to conceal on his person, and for some reason added a laptop computer to the pile. Nanashi put down his sword and his gun.

"Is that it?" asked Kazuya with his eyebrow raised.

Nanashi rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I can kill people without my weapons. And I don't see you lobotomizing your cousin or gagging your wife. What do you want me to do, cut off my arms? If you feel that scared, take that devil dog of yours along."

Kazuya stood up, eyebrow twitching. "All right, whoever's following me, come."

"Wait, before we go any further, I demand to know how that man stabbed us without killing us!" said Agent Chaos.

"Magic healing powers," said Mina, fluffing a pillow. "I am both a miko and a witch." She waited for a reaction. "You don't seem too surprised."

"That actually explains it perfectly," said Agent Wolf. "We have a contract with a local cult. They heal us with the power of religion in exchange for a large stipend."

Kazuya froze. "What did you say?"

Aoi grabbed Kazuya's arm. "Kazuya, they've been in business for a long time. Did you think that no one else figured out that they could heal lethal wounds?"

"Then why haven't they already put doctors and hospitals out of business?"

"If you were a normal person that got into a car accident, would you call an ambulance or would you drag yourself to the headquarters of some cult that claims they can heal people? And of the handful of people who had actually gone to them for healing, most of them wouldn't have been hurt badly enough to trust them with a life and death situation. If you're already walking around in the Shinjuku Underground Mall, you're probably not bleeding to death. It would be a broken arm or leg at worst."

"If I got into a car accident, someone would make that choice for me," said Kazuya.

"Maybe the Cult of Gaea would help delinquents or people who get into street fights, but they're trying to lie low," said Aoi. "If you were a normal person, the rumor that that local pseudo-Christian cult that the actual Christians scoff at can heal people would be on the same level as Bigfoot. Especially since they charge based on how much they like you."

"How do you know about the Cult of Gaea?" asked Agent Rock suspiciously.

"Long story. Got into some trouble, and I asked them to fix me up on the off chance that the rumors were true."

The agents dispersed. "Cover each others' backs!" Special Agent Kawamoto called after them. The first thing she did was pull the cover off the other sleeping teenager, whose only similarities with Naoki Kashima was the fact that he was male, short, and looked pretty Japanese.

As soon as Kawamoto mentally confirmed that this was not the target, the sleeping boy opened his eyes, grabbed the blanket out of her hands, and went right back to sleep.

"You're going to look under the couch for a trapdoor, aren't you?" said Kazuya.

"Or for a secret compartment built into the couch," said Kawamoto.

Kazuya gently shook the sleeping boy awake. "Wake up," he said in a kind tone. "Hallelujah."

"Mph?" said the boy.

"Just get up for thirty seconds, and you can lie back on the couch," said Kazuya, lifting up the boy bridal style.

Kawamoto looked under the cushions and couch, but found nothing. Kazuya set down the boy, who had already fallen asleep. "Poor kid never gets enough sleep," he said.

Kawamoto checked the other couches and the rug, and even put out the fire and stuck her head in the fireplace. Agent Wolf glared menacingly at Lily and the other residents of the house, who didn't seem to care.

"When you're done, we can move on to the kitchen," said Kazuya boredly.

The kitchen was more interesting. There was a whole cake in the fridge, professionally decorated by hand, next to a repurposed gallon water container full of what was probably goat's blood. There was a large stack of chocolate bars in one corner.

"Don't you dare steal any of my chocolate," said Kazuya sourly. "Or anything else. But mostly my chocolate!" Special Agent Kawamoto reluctantly put back one of the many chocolate bars.

The cupboards, pantry, and freezer revealed lots of interesting things about the residents of the house. There were lots of high quality pots, spatulas, and pans, which looked brand new at a beginner's glance but were simply very well maintained. There were dozens of cans of many varieties of food, ranging from peaches to cream of mushroom soup. There were three kinds of ice cream, and two pints were lactose-free. There were lots of bottles in the liquor cabinet, including some 'truth serum'. There was a whole shelf dedicated to spices and extracts, all of them expensive. There were also some ubiquitous kitchen things like rice, flour, oil, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, and baking soda. Special Agent Kawamoto had bought many of the same brands, and whoever did the shopping in this place had bought the goods in the largest packages that the supermarket offered. Unfortunately, nothing showed any sign of Naoki Kashima.

"So…" said Kazuya. "You're Wolf, right? Is that a codename, or what?"

"Codename," said Wolf gruffly.

"What kind of pizza do you like?"

"Shut up."

"Just trying to not be bored."

"I'll tell you if you answer me this," said Agent Wolf. "Why the hell do you have blood in your fridge?"

"There's so many people living here that we decided that buying live animals and slaughtering them is an efficient use of our time and money, and we're trying to use as much of the carcass as possible. Blood is good for demonic rituals, placating the resident vampire, humiliating high school girls, and black pudding."

Agent Wolf was speechless. "What was that?"

"You heard me. It's exactly how it sounds. You know that there are people in the world with magical healing powers. Why's it so hard to believe in anything else?"

"It's not that I don't necessarily disbelieve it, it's just that it's creepy," said Agent Wolf. "You know that there are things like leeches and incurable diseases out there, but thinking about them makes my skin crawl."

"Point taken," said Kazuya. "So, pizza?"

"…I like pineapple and fried fish. Together."

"Not the strangest food I've heard of. Want to check out the bathroom next?"

After they went through the bathroom, the hall closets, and the reception area for some private detective agency, Special Agent Kawamoto and Agent Wolf decided to call it a night. When they got back to the living room, Agents Cowboy and Ninja were waiting next to Tatsuya. "We couldn't find anyone, but I'm pretty sure that they're up to something illegal," said Agent Ninja.

"You just can't have a closet full of guns and ammo without planning something," said Agent Cowboy.

"I think they're those crazy survivalist people who think the end of the world is coming," said Agent Ninja. "There was a closet full of canned food."

"I think that they're trying to end the world by summoning demons," said Agent Cowboy. "There's this giant drum thing that looks like it belongs in a museum."

"You know we can hear you," said Tatsuya, trying not to fall asleep.

"You're not nearly as wrong as you think," said Kazuya.

A little while afterwards, the agents from upstairs came back, followed by the rest of the house's population. None of them looked very happy. None of them were Naoki, either. "Why'd you make us get out of bed?" moaned the ghostly man.

"I need to know if any of you are Naoki Kashima," said Special Agent Kawamoto. "All of the woman can leave. You in the heart boxers, you can leave. You're too tall, you can leave…"

Long after all of the sleeping residents left for their rooms (except for the ghostlike man, who decided to stay up since it was already very late), and the pizza delivery girl came and went, the last pair of agents came back. They looked like they had just been chased by a dragon.

"I am never doing that again," said Agent Rock, collapsing on the rug.

"How the hell did you fit a thirty meter drop into a two story house?" said Agent Chaos, who was completely soaked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," said Nanashi. He didn't look tired at all.

"Really," said Agent Chaos, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrow. "After everything today, and everything before?"

Nanashi whispered something very quick into Agent Chaos's ear. Agent Chaos's expression was a confusing mix of disbelief, forced laughter, confusion, despair, and bowel-twisting horror.

"What did he say?" asked Agent Rock.

"Trying to forget it," said Agent Chaos, curling up in the fetal position.

Nanashi shrugged. "Well, if it's any consolation…" He whispered something else into Agent Chaos's ear, this time taking a bit longer.

Agent Chaos just looked confused. "Oh. That… helps?"

"So Naoki isn't here, and since you didn't take it as face value, we wasted all this time trying to prove it," said the ghostlike man, munching on a slice of mushroom and sausage.

"Better than the alternative," said Kazuya. "No one's dead yet, and a repeat session isn't likely. Better one night's lost sleep than many sleepless nights."

The ghostlike man continued grumbling, but didn't argue.

Aoi handed Special Agent Kawamoto a piece of paper with a phone number. "This is the number for my detective agency. Leaving a message counts as advance notice."

Special Agent Kawamoto pocketed it without thanking the woman. "Squad, take your last slice, and move out. This mission is a failure."

"At least it's because of bad information than actual lack of skill," said the ghostlike man. "Of course, we did have you all at our mercy, but that had nothing to do with your failure."

Agent Wolf shook his knife at the ghostlike man.

"Should we take a pie for the guys outside?" asked Agent Rock.

"Oh, wait," said Kazuya, suddenly standing up and putting on outside slippers. "You didn't have more people surrounding the house, did you?"

Lily facepalmed. "I completely forgot about them!"

Kazuya rushed outside. The agents looked at each other, but followed him.

Outside, the other agents were nursing each others' wounds. There were bite marks and claw marks over their gear. There was ammo all over the ground.

"If you're keeping a hellhound as a pet, 'Beware of Dog' signs don't cut it," moaned Agent Crow.

"Report," said Special Agent Kawamoto.

"Giant lion wolf thing attacked," said Agent Crow, pointing with his head. "That one."

Kazuya was hugging a gigantic blue lion with a snake for a tail, and rubbing its fur. It was panting and wagging its snakes like a dog's tail. "Good boy, Pascal, good boy," he said.

The lion thing growled a response, and licked Kazuya's face.

When Kazuya noticed the slack-jawed agents, he said coldly, "This is exactly what it looks like. Now get off my lawn!"

X

"They paid for the pizza, right?" said the apparently teenaged Nanashi.

"No, all of them said that carrying spare change into combat is a horrible idea," said the redheaded Mina. "When I asked about bills, they said that wallets ruin their suit lining."

Tatsuya moaned, sheathing his sword. "It's dawn," he said with his eyes closed. All the window blinds were shut, but Tatsuya could always tell when the sun was up. "I have to go to work now."

"So do I," said Soma blearily, getting up and pouring himself a cup of goat's blood. Even though he wasn't a vampire, ghost, or any kind of undead being, blood helped.

"Don't you have sick days?" asked Aoi, fiddling with her whip.

"Oh, right," said Tatsuya, making a call. He then fell asleep on the couch next to the sleeping teenaged Hallelujah. Kazuya fell asleep at the table, getting drool all over his green pajamas. No one had the heart to wake him. Aoi wrapped her whip around her shoulder and carried him to their bedroom.

"You're called Agent Lily?" said Hijiri. "Why Lily?"

"I like flowers," said Jun, yawning. "Too tired to tell you why lilies… are…"

Suddenly, the door was kicked off its hinges. "SURPRISE!" shouted a voice. A teenage boy ran into the room, bottle of booze in each hand. He was wearing shoes, socks, shorts, a jacket, and nothing else. Normal Japanese etiquette dictated that indoor shoes should be clean, and the kid's shoes were. Nothing else was. Had he worn a backpack, people would have taken him for a rugged wilderness hiker. But since he didn't, he just looked homeless. "It is I, NAOKI KASHI—hey, are you all right?"

The exhausted residents of the boarding house all glared at him.

"Japanese government agency wanted to kidnap you," said Hijiri. "Any idea why?"

Naoki's brow furrowed. "No idea. But guess who got a full time job!"

"How?" asked Mina, jaw dropping. "You can't stay anywhere for more than a few years because you don't age. How could you get a job?"

"Been working for an old blind dude. Saved him from being beaten up in an alleyway, and he bought me a drink and offered me a job after I told him how I couldn't get one. All he knows is my college records. Can't tell I'm a teenager."

"All right, what kind of work are you doing?"

"Researching alternate universes for a group called Cipher Hail. I know it's a weird name, but apparently they're trying to make coded messages with weather phenomena."

"Naoki, before you sit on the furniture, take a bath," Kazuya called from the second floor.

"Fine," said Naoki. He ran off in the direction of the bathroom.

"Hm… Cipher Hail," said Mina. "It sounds really familiar."

"It probably has something to do with Lucifer," said Hijiri. When everyone stared at him, he added, "Lucifer? Sometimes calls himself Louis Cypher?"

"What!?" shouted Kazuya from the second floor. He ran back downstairs. "Louis Cypher was actually Lucifer all along?! That explains so much!"

Everyone stared at him. "You… really couldn't figure that out?" said Hallelujah.

"I… er… I'm going to sleep now."

When Naoki left, Jun buried his head in his hands. "Why does everyone have a job except for me?" he moaned.

OMAKE

"We will be entering through the bathroom," said Special Agent Kawamoto. "I know it's unoccupied because the lights are out. Agent Lily, lift us up."

Ten seconds later, Jun heard Soma shout, "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!" followed by Special Agent Kawamoto shouting, "WHO THE HELL PEES IN TOTAL DARKNESS?!" which was followed by another shout from Soma, who probably realized that he was peeing in front of a woman.

Stupid vampire night vision.

TO BE CONTINUED!

[1] The fight between Aoi and the agent: if you take the advice of a fanfiction writer on how to fight, you probably deserve to get beaten up.

[2] Kawamoto criticizing Mina and Tatsuya: Mina knows how to use a gun, but actually using them to shoot someone is harder than the shooting range. She hasn't dealt with that kind of stress before, and her amateur mistakes show even more. Tatsuya is experienced with a sword and has killed people, but he's not as good as the other sword-wielding protagonists because in Persona 2, you hardly even use your weapons because the system rewards you every time you use your Persona. He's also more used to killing demons, so his sword style involves wide arc slashes to get enough power to kill demons that are hardier than humans. It doesn't translate well to fighting humans you don't want to kill. Normally, I get annoyed in stories where the woman is all scared and the man is totally fine, but in this case Tatsuya is an experienced fighter while Mina has not been in any canon fight.

Just curious: Is it plausible for the residents of the boarding house to afford the house they live in? They are living in a suburb of a city that is not Tokyo. There are more of them than appear in the chapter, but they include a computer programmer (Kazuya), a cop (Chie), an engineer (Tatsuya), a reporter (Hijiri), two government agents (Soma and formerly Jun), a miko (Mina), a translator (Ginko), a patissier (Katsuya), a private detective (Aoi), a full time student and part time worker (Yu), and a bunch of freeloaders (Nanashi, formerly Naoki, and Hallelujah). Except for Hijiri, Katsuya, and Mina, none of the people with jobs have had their job for more than a few years. Then, as a last resort, there's Soma's Mimic soul ability, which allows money to appear when he is injured, and, of course, burglary. If not even that makes sense, I have a plot excuse ready.

The protagonists of the Persona games and SMT1 (the games where you get yen from battles, at least for a little while) also aren't using the money they got from their adventures, because they spent it all on college fees.

The house is also bigger on the inside, due to a reason that will be explained later. The house was a normal two story house when they bought it, so the size of the interior doesn't factor in the price. And yes, it's huge.

Actually, between so many people, the food and furniture cost would be more important than the house cost. Cleaning isn't an issue since Kazuya employs/enslaves a Brownie for help.

Kazuya is a programmer because I thought that in the early 90s, the only people who had computers were the experts who really knew how they worked. I'm not sure about that anymore, but the idea stuck. Soma works for the Agency of Supernatural Investigation, the government organization that Arikado works for. Naoki is a freeloader because he's immortal and 17, and can't keep a job for long without people realizing that he doesn't age. He wanders around Japan and takes part time work when he can. Chie is a cop because she says that she wants to be one, Hijiri is already a reporter, and Mina is already a miko. Yu is studying to be a psychologist because the Social Links and Jungian philosophy is pretty prevalent in Persona 4. Aoi is a private detective because she was the resistance leader at the start of SMT1, and she managed to organize them into a real threat. The best thing for being a leader would usually be something like 'mob boss' or 'military sergeant', but I doubt she'd do that. The other idea is 'corporate executive', but that doesn't suit her either. Then I thought that private detectives would know who to go to when they need something done, and they'd constantly call in and repay favors. Nanashi and Hallelujah have full time jobs, but legally they're not real jobs and they don't get paid.

There is a reason why Tatsuya and Katsuya aren't cops, why Jun isn't a teacher, and why Ginko isn't an actress or something. Eternal Punishment still happened. Tatsuya is an engineer because rumors gave him the power to be really good with machines. Ginko is a translator because she keeps speaking Cantonese just to rebel, which suggests that she's good at languages. Katsuya is a patissier because it's his dream. Jun was a secret agent because I thought of him as the fastest and most ninja-like of the protagonists.

I think of SMT protagonists as having more raw power than the average Castlevania protagonist. But the Castlevania protagonists tend to be better dodgers and more skilled. This is because the Castlevania games are platformers where dodging and hitting depends on the player's skill and not the RNG. Damage is fixed and doesn't improve at the same rate that SMT characters have.

A quick runthrough of the characters' main strengths (not everyone mentioned lives in the house):

Soma: Versatile and unpredictable. No one has as many powers packed into one person as him.

Kazuya: Skilled summoner and negotiator.

Aoi: Knows how to electrocute people.

Aleph: Manages to become second best at everything. In other words, almost as good as the people who are _really_ good, and better than everyone else. Except for guns. He's best at those.

Naoki: Can punch through everything, immune to most attacks. Greatest raw power as well.

Flynn: Good at exploiting weaknesses without a team to back him up. Also, the best of the SMT protagonists at climbing and jumping.

Isabeau: While she's not the best at healing, she is the best healer to have with you in combat because she tanks hits very well.

Nanashi: Any attack he makes can pierce through everything, and he can't stay dead. Seems like a better version of Naoki, but he's easier to kill.

Hallelujah: Magic Compression coupled with Awakened Power gives him a lot of raw magical power that can pierce enemies. More importantly never runs out of juice.

Yoko: Most accurate widespread ranged attacks, and best at controlling and restraining her magic.

Julius (and any Belmont): The most skilled with his weapon.

Alucard: No one actually knows how to dodge Soul Steal.

Mina: Absolutely the best healer.

Minato and Yu: Both are Fools who can use multiple Personas. Minato has more raw power, but Yu has more stamina.

Tatsuya: Most attuned with his element.

Jun: Fastest.

Ginko: Not counting null, repel, drain, and auto-revive, the best sponge for soaking up damage.

Chie: Crits all the time.

Hammer: Knows proper assembly and maintenance of guns, and has experience with modern warfare.

The other Belmonts have this against each other, too. All of them, when compared to the other protagonists, have the label of 'Best at using chosen weapon.'

Leon: Most attuned to the Vampire Killer.

Sonia: Best mage.

Trevor: Best at working with others.

Christopher: I got nothing.

Simon: Strongest willpower.

Juste: Best all-rounder.

Richter: Best at Item Crashes and general subweapons.

Julius: Most acrobatic.

The Kuzunohas (if they appear) get the bonus that they're the best at training their demons.


	3. Chapter 3: It's a Secret To Everybody

I edited chapter 2 so that you don't have to fumble around to remember everyone's name and description.

Weird thing: one Chinese character for a measure of money (kuai), in the traditional writing contains one of the characters for ghost or demon (gui for Chinese, oni for Japanese). I wonder if that's related to Macca?

Of all the games, I think Apocalypse best shows how dangerous Tokyo is for anyone who wants to fight demons, but aren't the special main characters. A level 20 horde kills a veteran and a prodigy, when they're about fifty feet away from safety and on a mission so basic that cadets can do it. Nanashi and co reach level 20 on the second day of the game (on the New Moon). Things like the dead hunter app and teenagers being told to leave their phones intact when they die are treated as completely normal. And, of course, Nanashi slaughters every fighter in Tokyo on Massacre.

Even though Abaddon destroys an entire city district, I find that Shesha is scarier. Kind of like how in _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ Arthur couldn't grasp earth being destroyed, Valhalla suddenly vanishing was on too large of a scale for it to seem real. Shesha randomly appearing and leaving a proper trail of corpses and terrified survivors isn't as destructive, but it's more effective. It helps that Shesha is treated as enough of a threat to warrant a huge shift in the priorities of the leading factions, whereas Abaddon is treated as a symptom of the Center's corruption.

I don't think that Apocalypse has a real Neutral ending, other than letting Nanashi die. Bonds and Massacre are touted as Neutral but are actually Law and Chaos at the bone wrapped up in Neutral packaging. Just because you kill everyone doesn't mean that it's Neutral; you still kill YHVH on the Law route of SMT2, Yama and Echidna both have Law alignments even though they're on the side of Chaos, and one of the most efficient ways to change your alignment in SMT1 (or at least the version I played, which was ios) is to either talk to a demon you've already recruited to get them to leave (Law) or to kill them (Chaos), regardless of their alignment. Bonds is the happiest Law ending in the franchise. All of the dialogue choices for Bonds involve obeying some rule of society. You're nice to your friends, risk your life for them, help the weak in their time of need, do what a normal RPG protagonist would do, etc. The theme of friendship overcoming all is a pretty strong Japanese value. Massacre is the Chaos ending that's very close to Gotou and the original Cult of Gaia's philosophies. You pursue personal power and freedom, reject the boundaries that others impose on you, kill those who claim to be gods and saviors and expose their hypocrisies, and work alongside an ancient nature god.

I find that the first Law and Chaos heroes embody their alignment better than the later ones. The modern idea of how a Law or Chaos hero should act wasn't set in stone at the time, and I find the traits that make them lawful and chaotic (outside of taking sides) are more interesting than the later ones. The Law Hero was lawful because he acted like a JRPG hero should act; for that same reason I consider the Bonds ending to be Apocalypse's Law ending. Law Hero starts by trying to save his girlfriend, sacrifices his life for his friends, uses his remaining time as a ghost to warn others, and comes back to lead his people. He's also not adverse to things like purchasing illegal weapons and beating up a guard, something that was lost in later iterations. Meanwhile, Zelenin is lawful due to her dislike of using non-angel demons because demons killed her comrades, and Jonathan is lawful because he believes in peace above all else. Both are outspoken about continuing their mission at all costs even though their bosses might not have the best of intentions or even their own safety in mind, and both of them are collected. Law Hero has no loyalties until the end of the game. The Chaos Hero believes in power not because he's strong, but because he's weak. He thinks that power will solve his problems. He doesn't even want power to rule the world or anything; he just wants to not be picked on. He gets a bit nicer as the game goes on, too. Jimenez looks out for himself, and Walter wants knowledge and freedom. The idea that Chaos draws in the weak as well as the strong, and that it allows growth and change, was also lost as the games go on.

For future reference, the group that supports chaos in SMT1, 2, and 3 will be known as the Cult of Gaia, or the Gaians for short. The people who wear all red who value power will be known as the Ring of Gaea, or the Gaeans. Gaians and Gaeans are pronounced identically.

I will try not to recycle all of the old jokes from Not The Intended Use. Soma will not meet Leon by translating and mocking his diary.

The good news is that I have two more chapters with better ideas than this one. The bad news is that you'll need to slog through this one first. I'm not very proud of this one, because it's just a lot of exposition with nothing really happening. What made Not the Intended Use funny was the absurdity of the situations, as well as the reactions to them. There will be absurdity next chapter. Also my keyboard will be broken for a while, so I can't use the backspace key. You don't realize how much you correct yourself when typing until you can't.

The Fiend race in Japanese is the Majin race. Guess who else was a Majin? Majin Buu! Majin Buu is a Fiend! No wonder he was so hard to beat.

I don't know what you did last night

Soma didn't know what he was expecting, sharing a room with two emotionally unstable superhumans. After the first night, he expected it to be a whirlwind of outbursts and rage, dotted with moments of vulnerability and clinging. That, or his roommates would completely shut him out and the most he'd hear from them would be complaints about him snoring or arguments over open windows.

Whatever he was thinking, Soma was not expecting his roommates to be so flippant about their demonic powers.

"How long do I have to stay like this?" said Naoki. Soma had come back from his classes, to find Naoki lifting up his bunk bed.

"Few more minutes," said Kazuya, who was reading another book.

There was a small implike creature underneath the bed, holding some cleaning implements. It said something in a chittering language. Soma immediately put his hand in his jacket's inside pocket to cast some magic.

"Easy, Soma," said Kazuya, noticing Soma's expression. "This is a Brownie. I employ him. Well, technically I enslaved him, but he sold himself and it's only until the rest of my life."

"Only?" said Soma.

"Technically, I can enslave him forever by telling him to obey someone else like they obey me for the rest of their lives, and then my successor can do that for their successor, but that would be cruel. Still, it's not any worse than what you do."

Soma looked at the Brownie, which was concentrating on cleaning the industrial carpet that covered the entire floor, and then at Kazuya. "Why is it here?"

"It's cleaning the carpet," said Kazuya simply.

"No, why are you making a Brownie do it?" said Soma, trying to figure out what he wanted to say.

"Because moonshine is a pain to get out of carpet, and I don't want to do it," said Kazuya.

Soma took in a deep breath. "Kazuya, why did you summon a demon in broad daylight when you are fully capable of washing the carpet by hand? Aren't we trying to keep the fact that you bound a demon to you with a non-laptop portable computer a secret?"

Kazuya shrugged. "You know that, Naoki knows that, we all know about it. We've already established that we're not going to rat each other out. Why should I hide it from you?"

"Won't someone see?"

"The curtains are shut, and the door's closed," said Kazuya. "No one can look in."

"Guess you thought living with a demon would be a little different, eh?" said Naoki, looking up from his book. "You were thinking that we'd be like superheroes and fight crime at night, right? We'd draw elaborate plans for no reason and have the room be our secret base."

"Actually, no," said Soma.

"Or that we'd be running some sort of illegal crime ring or yakuza group using our powers to enforce dominance over our many thug underlings and baffle the police," said Kazuya. "You can't trace magically summoned demons."

"Wasn't thinking of that, either."

"If someone told me that I would be rooming with a vampire, I'd think that they'd go out every night looking for a virgin to drink from," said Naoki. "Or we'd be up to our knees in your brainwashed, undead minions."

"Yeah, not going to happen."

"Good."

There was a pause. "Kazuya, you spilled _what_ on the carpet!?"

There was a knock at the door. Immediately, Kazuya grabbed the Brownie and shoved into a drawer. Naoki dropped the bed before quickly realizing that it would make a loud noise, and caught it halfway down and gently lowered it. Once both of his roommates gave the clear signal, Soma opened the door.

Soma's childhood friend, Mina Hakuba, was standing in the doorway. Behind him, Soma's roommates relaxed. After some arguing, they decided to let Mina in on their secrets since Soma was a bad liar and she'd probably assume the worst if he refused to tell. The three of them agreed that any of them could tell a trusted individual about the group's secrets, provided that the rest of the group was told about the individual and the teller was absolutely sure that the individual could keep it secret.

Soma recalled how easily Mina had accepted the fact that he was the reincarnation of an evil vampire who was definitely not Vlad the Impaler. So when he told her the fact that his roommates were a demon and demon summoner, he wasn't surprised by how easily she had taken the news.

He was, however, both shocked and oddly flattered when she turned up in the middle of the night to tell them that if they ever tried to hurt him or use his connection to Dracula, she'd drench them in Holy Water as they slept. At least, that was the idea. The jumpy and paranoid Naoki almost throttled her for being a stranger invading his living space, and Kazuya was too sleepy and out of it to recall what she said the next morning. The day after, Naoki quietly informed her that he couldn't be hurt by most weapons, not even Holy Water, and Kazuya added that as he was a regular human with no dark powers, most kinds of Holy Water just meant wet sheets. But Kazuya expressed his approval for anyone who had the guts to threaten a pair of people who regularly fought beings considered gods for the sake of a friend, to which Mina gave him a very strange look.

"Come in," said Soma. Behind him, Kazuya took his Brownie out of the drawer and ordered it to stay put.

"Hullo, Hakuba," said Naoki. "Did you need something?"

Mina nodded. "I wanted to ask you something."

"Is it how there are multiple Thors running around?" asked Naoki. "Because we're still trying to figure that one out."

"There's no indication that they're not the same person," said Kazuya.

"Yes, but one's an ambassador, and the other's a thug," said Naoki. "I'd like to see my Thor engage in diplomatic discussion. Other than, you know, talk to the hammer."

"No, it's something else," said Mina. "But, if we're on the subject of your world, how did Hijiri write an entire article about the Conception before it even happened?"

Naoki opened his mouth, and then closed it. "You're right," he said, making a magazine appear from nothing and then speed-reading through. "How the hell did he find out?! Everything he wrote is completely accurate! He didn't even have the Amala Network at the time!"

"Can I see?" asked Kazuya, and Naoki handed over the magazine.

"Tell me when you figure it out," said Mina. "Also, could you put on a shirt?"

"Can't. Laundry day," said Naoki, reading over Kazuya's shoulder.

"Fine then," said Mina. "I need your expertise. I think my roommate is a superheroine."

There was a moment of silence.

"A superheroine?" said Kazuya, looking up from the magazine. "Like… Sailor Moon or Cyborg 003?"

"Something like that," said Mina.

"Civilization really did end for you in the nineties," muttered Naoki. "Have you found her leotard and cape?"

"Well, I don't have any evidence that she's a superheroine, specifically, but I know she's hiding something," said Mina. "I wanted to ask you guys because you have more experience with keeping secrets than I do."

"Didn't you run a service in high school where you'd give people lots of energy for 500 yen?" said Soma. "You made enough money to buy a game console, and cake once a week before your parents stopped you?"

"Exactly," said Mina. "Everyone knows I'm a miko."

"Oh, right, you're a miko," said Naoki. "Which god is your shrine dedicated to?"

"Are you asking in case you might have killed her?" asked Mina warily.

"Yes," said Naoki. "But don't worry; I won't attack you or her unless either of you provoke me."

Mina said the name of her shrine's kami.

"Who?" said Naoki.

Mina repeated the name, a bit louder and without stuttering.

"Never heard of her," said Naoki.

"Of course you don't," said Mina, shoulders relaxing. "She's a local kami. Not every shrine serves the major players."

"Guess that's a good thing," said Naoki. "Do miko get their powers from their kami, or are they inherent?"

"For me, it's inherent, but I can't speak for everyone," said Mina. "Anyways, about my roommate?"

"Oh, sorry," said Naoki. "Carry on."

"Do you know Chihiro Makimura? Smaller than Naoki, short hair like this?" No one did. "We've only been living together for less than two weeks, but I still think she's up to something. She leaves the dorm almost every night, and comes back late. Sometimes, she's injured. She's got lots of scars; she hides them with long sleeved shirts and pants, but she doesn't leave the room when she changes. I've been healing her on the sly."

"What do her scars look like?" asked Kazuya, leaving the magazine on the desk.

"Some are fresh, but most of them look old," said Mina.

"I mean, what kind of scars? Burns, claw, acid, freezer burn (or whatever you call sudden freezing and thawing), stab, slash, blunt, gunshot?"

"Kazuya, I live in a country where no one has guns, a city where sword fights do not spontaneously break out like choreographed crowd dances in a musical, and a world where giant fire breathing monsters do not roam the streets," said Mina coldly. "I have no idea what half of those look like."

Kazuya opened his mouth, and closed it. "Right. It's incredible what people can get used to."

"How about this," said Naoki. "You've seen scars before, right? Everyone's been cut, and people who cook get oven burns. Did any of Makimura's scars look weirder than usual?"

"Well, I know what laceration and burn scars look like," said Mina, her voice trailing off a bit. Soma knew when Mina wasn't telling the whole truth, but he trusted her enough not to call her out. "I saw both on her, along with some I didn't recognize. No gunshot wounds, though."

"How do you know what gunshot wounds look like?" asked Naoki.

"Soma was shot by monsters in Dracula's castle," said Mina, giving Soma a meaningful look.

"Oh, um, right," said Soma, catching on. "Stupid Skeleton Gunmen. Those bullets hurt!" Soma wasn't entirely sure if Skeleton Gunmen were real, but the name sounded right in his head. As if on cue, a few of the souls in his head nodded and confirmed that Skeleton Gunmen did indeed exist, and that Dracula used to mix up the gunpowder himself. But they ran out of gunpowder when Julius Belmont led the attack; with the only one who knew how to make it gone, the gunmen were reduced to throwing bones like any other skeleton by the time Soma came around. Some of Soma's skeletons were in fact former Skeleton Gunmen.

"Bullets are one of the few things I'm not immune to," said Naoki conversationally. "I ran into a tribe of demonic cannibals, and-"

"So your roommate has been doing something that involves fire and knives, and possibly more," said Kazuya.

"Yes," said Mina. "That's why I think she's a superheroine. Is that enough proof?"

Naoki shrugged. "That's enough to say that she's involved with something strange, but not enough to say that she's a superheroine. She could be a retired teenage assassin who goes out to a part time job at a bar. Or she works for the circus."

"Well, there's only one way to find out," said Kazuya without any change in inflection. "We must stalk her relentlessly."

"Mm-hm," said Soma, before he realized that Kazuya was serious. "We can't do that! It's illegal, she's a girl and three of us are guys, and we have class!"

"How about you ask her directly?" suggested Naoki.

"That's what I wanted to ask you," said Mina. "How would you react if I accused you of being a superhero?"

Naoki shrugged. Kazuya frowned. Soma spoke. "If you thought I was a superhero, I'd laugh you off," said Soma. "That is, the general you, not you specifically, Mina," he added quickly.

Mina looked Kazuya dead in the eye. "Kazuya, I know you're a superhero."

Kazuya gave her a look that suggested that Mina spent too much time reading manga.

Mina did the same to Naoki. Naoki just looked confused. She then tried it on Soma, but he didn't react at all.

"Let's keep it general," said Naoki. "If you're exactly right, it would be effective. If you're wrong, you look like those guys on wizard shows that insist that it's all done by aliens. I'd just say, 'I know your secret.' That freaked me out when Kazuya pulled it."

"You looked like you were going to kill me," said Kazuya.

"Exactly," said Naoki. "If she does that, you're right. Make sure that you have 110 at the ready."

"Wouldn't she call the bluff and ask what Mina thinks her secret is?" asked Soma.

"Fine, just tell her that you know something is up with her, and throw the evidence in her face," said Naoki.

"If someone tried to use the fact that I go out late and have scars on my body as leverage, I'd still refuse to tell them anything," said Kazuya. "You can't go to the police or turn me into a social pariah with just that. I'm not doing anything illegal. There's no curfew. My cache of guns and futuristic laser swords, on the other hand, are illegal and qualify completely."

"You could pressure her by saying that you could stalk her relentlessly and that she'd never be able to get away from you," suggested Naoki. "Unless, of course, she changes rooms or puts a restraining order on you. Actually, don't do that."

"Like I said, actually stalking her relentlessly would work, up until you get caught," said Kazuya.

"Or you could say that you're worried about her," said Soma.

Mina shook her head. "I tried that on you, my childhood friend. Remember Castlevania?"

"I'm sorry," said Soma, hanging his head. "I was afraid that you'd hate me if you knew."

"Water under the bridge," said Mina calmly.

"Either way, would asking hurt your standing with Makimura?" asked Kazuya. "Would it get you further away from your goals? Would it still be worth it to get an incomplete answer?"

Mina mulled this over. "She'll go to greater lengths to hide. If she's good at it, it will confirm my suspicions. If she's bad at it, I'll be able to find more evidence from her screwups. I'll ask her."

"Do you think she'll kill you to keep her secret?" asked Kazuya

"No, of course not," said Mina. When she saw Kazuya's expression, hers changed as well. "…You're serious."

"Like I said, Naoki looked like he was about to kill me."

"I thought you were an assassin!" protested Naoki. "Most people don't try to kill their roommates with a razor blade."

"That was because I thought you were an assassin, too," said Kazuya.

"So if I don't look like a threat, she won't attack," said Mina.

"If she's sane, she wouldn't," said Soma.

"I wouldn't assume that," said Naoki. "People do stupid things when they're backed in a corner. I have a plan in case thing go south. Do you have a phone?"

"Of course I do," said Mina.

"Before you talk to her, call one of us and leave it on. We'll hang around here with the phone on speaker. We'll hear every word you two say, and if anything goes wrong, we can call the police. If she ever gets too close, just tell her that and she'll back off. Here's my number."

"Thanks," said Mina.

Soma's worry must have shown on his face, because Mina said, "Don't worry about me. If she doesn't back down, I can defend myself."

"Those judo classes you took-"

"Yoko's been training me," Mina interrupted.

"Oh," said Soma, sitting back down. "Not that I don't think it's a good thing, but why did this come up?"

Mina took in a deep breath. "Remember when Celia attacked us in the middle of the street?"

"I can't forget," said Soma, who had taken to always carrying his weapons in his coat, keeping him secure but also forcing him to avoid metal detectors.

"And when Celia used that clone of me to-"

"I know," said Soma quickly. He hadn't told Kazuya or Naoki about that little detail.

Naoki gave a grin. Kazuya said flatly, "If you don't finish your sentence, we're going to assume the worst."

"… Celia used a doppelganger of Mina and pretended to kill it in front of me to make me angry enough to become Dracula again."

"That's better," said Kazuya.

"Oh," said Naoki, slightly disappointed.

"Anyways, if my death is enough to drive Soma insane, and his enemies can attack me at any time, it's in my best interest to learn how to defend myself," said Mina. "While breaking off our relationship might seem like a good plan on paper, I can't do that. Besides the fact that I like you (in a completely platonic way, I should add), there's no guarantee that your enemies wouldn't attack me anyways. Magic is the best legal and concealable weapon to have, so I've been training with Yoko ever since she got back from Celia's castle."

"While I applaud your initiative, that was in March," said Soma. "What can you learn in one month?"

"Less than someone who's cheating using vampire magic, but more than someone who's never used magic before," said Mina. "I can shoot a decent icicle. My fire's pretty weak but lighting her clothes on fire should scare her off, and my lightning tends to gravitate towards electric sockets instead of the training dummies. Good thing Yoko knows what a Faraday cage is, or I would have lost all of my p—my homework."

"Who's Yoko?" asked Naoki.

"A friend," said Mina. "She's a witch."

Naoki blinked. "So… what's your best spell? Expelliarmus? Stupefy? Flipendo?"

"Are you sure those are real spells?" said Mina.

"No," said Naoki.

"I'm pretty sure that Flipendo isn't real," said Soma.

"And why would you think that the other two are?" asked Kazuya.

"Because Expelliarmus is Harry's most used spell, Stupefy is a pretty common spell, too… Wait, Mina, when did _Harry Potter_ come out, again?"

Mina looked it up on her phone. "The first book came out in 1997. But it came out in Japan in 2001."

"And civilization ended in 1999 for you, so… you've never read _Harry Potter_?" asked Soma.

"What's _Harry Potter_?" asked Kazuya.

There was a brief clamor as all three people tried to explain _Harry Potter_ to Kazuya. The people next door banged on the wall and yelled at them to quiet down.

"We should probably do something about that," said Soma.

"I can probably soundproof the walls," said Kazuya.

Naoki checked his phone. "Yeah, we just need lots of foam, maybe flannel-"

Kazuya typed something into his weird arm-mounted computer, and told them to stand back. A tall figure in a brown cloak appeared. Soma smelled the scent of rot before he saw the decaying flesh. Instinctively, he put his hand inside his jacket, ready to unleash the Erinys soul. Beside him, Mina was forcing a nasty looking icicle to manifest, and Naoki relaxed into a fighting stance.

"Don't worry, it can only do what I say," said Kazuya. He turned to the demon. "Lich, soundproof the walls, door, floor, windows, and ceiling."

The zombie sorcerer spread its arms out, and Soma went deaf. Then he realized that his ears were fine, but he couldn't hear the shouts and birds from outside.

"Wait, isn't that dangerous?" said Mina, managing to recover from her fear of the undead monster.

"How is it dangerous?" asked Kazuya.

"What about fire alarms?"

"I can jump out the window," said Soma. "I survived jumping out of a twelve story tower without getting hurt."

"Oh yeah? Well, I jumped out of a sixty story tower!" said Naoki. "I mean, I was pretty seriously injured. But I could walk!"

"Oh yeah? I can fly," said Soma.

"No you-"

Soma turned into a fluffy white bat and flapped in place.

"I'll be damned; you can. Where does your extra mass go?" asked Naoki, scooping up Soma and weighing him. "You don't weigh the same as you did as a human. I mean, I've never held you up before, but you're definitely not… however this bat weighs. Wow, your fur is soft."

"Naoki, you can make things disappear into thin air! How are you-" Soma tried to retort, but a series of chirps came out.

"Oh, right," said Naoki. "You make a good point."

"Mind translating for the peanut gallery?" asked Mina.

Kazuya repeated Soma's words. "I can't believe that this thing speaks bat," said Kazuya, tapping the earpiece of his computer.

Soma turned back into a human, and slid down from Naoki's hand. "The Giant Bat is a monster. Your computer translates demon speech. Makes total sense."

"Anyways, about the alarm?" said Mina.

"Crazy superhumans," muttered Kazuya. He ordered his Lich to allow very loud sounds in, after Mina looked up the average decibel level of a fire alarm. (1) Naoki had considered pulling it to test it, but was talked down by Mina. Kazuya then returned his Lich to wherever he stored his demons.

"And can we get back to my roommate?" asked Mina.

"Oh, right," said Kazuya. "If you're looking for a direct confrontation, be prepared. I'm not sure if I can scan humans with this-"

Naoki took out a spyglass and stared at Mina. "Well, you're… Ooh, not bad! That _is_ nice."

Mina grabbed the spyglass out of Naoki's hands, hands shaking.

"…Is it really that embarrassing to know your skill list and power level?" asked Naoki.

Mina looked though the spyglass right at Naoki. "Nice tattoos," she said. "Hey, I can still see your clothes!"

"What did you think I was looking at?" asked Naoki. "I was gushing over your skillset. It's incredible! Well, your attack skills are weak, but you've got the best healing skills I've ever seen! Full MP heal, full HP heal, and for practically no cost!"

"…You did that purpose, didn't you?" said Mina.

"Yes," said Naoki. "Don't worry; after I became a demon, human girls don't seem to do it for me anymore. Anyways, why did you want to scan Mina, Kazuya?"

"I wanted to see if you and your roommate are evenly matched, in case a fight breaks out," said Kazuya. "I could give you a gun to even the odds, but that would be inadvisable, especially since you can't use one."

"Actually, I can," said Mina.

"No matter how good you are with one, it would still be a bad idea to bring a weapon," said Kazuya. "If anyone caught you with a gun, they'd call the cops on you. Swords and suchlike are a double edged sword (pun not intended); it could make her think twice about attacking you, but at the same time she might jump you before you can react. If you could use that purse like a meteor hammer or bring something like a violin or a trumpet… wait, did you just say that you can use guns?"

Mina nodded. "I spent what felt like weeks in Castlevania. I got bored. You know who Hammer is, right?" When Soma's roommates nodded, she continued, "We were both bored, and he was qualified to teach, so he taught me how to use a rifle. It wasn't legal, but neither of us cared. I got pretty good, but I haven't had any practice since."

Kazuya gave her a skeptical look. "How good can you possibly get in a few weeks? If you barely know combat spells in a month, can we really trust you with a gun?"

"I went to Yoko's place once a week for a few hours, but I was shooting monsters all day in Castlevania," said Mina, a bit annoyed at having her skill questioned. "There was nothing else to do. I started on zombies. They're slow and don't have any self preservation instinct. When Hammer noticed that I could do headshots, he brought me deeper into the castle. I'd watch his back and occasionally shoot things."

"Didn't you ever worry about running out of ammo?" asked Naoki.

Mina shook her head. "Hammer found out that if you hit the candles, these heart things come out and magically turn into bullets. And if you leave the room and then come back in, the candles come back. It was weird, but it was a magical castle inside of a solar eclipse that belonged to a vampire. We were desensitized by then."

"Interesting," said Kazuya. "I just bought a ton of ammo at every store I passed by."

"Where were they getting their bullets from in a postapocalyptic landscape?" asked Soma.

Kazuya shrugged. "Some people with the Demon Summoning Program made a mint off of making demons make them from scrap metal and whatever chemicals were lying around. Some people just made them themselves. Some of the Ars Goetia demons teach science, after all."

Soma had a sudden vision of Stolas writing gravity equations on a blackboard and trying to explain parallax, while a bunch of bored students took notes and drew giant robots.

"If you put in lots of hours into shooting, maybe you're a good shot, but I can't tell until I've seen you in action," said Kazuya.

"So you're an expert?" asked Mina, a bit snappishly. "How long did it take for _you_ to master the art of gunmanship?"

Kazuya shrugged. "It depends on what you mean by master. I might not have clocked as many hours per day as you, but I had to shoot things every day for years. It didn't take long to be able to reliably hit demons about the size of a human at close range. By the time I was actually eighteen, I could kill Sirens while standing on a moving turtle on the ocean on a windy, icy, and sunny day."

Mina blinked. "Windy and icy I get, but is sunny harder?"

"Yes," said Kazuya. "The glare is horrible, especially when it's reflecting off of the waves and ice."

"You know, that's much more ridiculous than me being able to pull off headshots on zombies, but I'll take your word for it, you demon summoner with gods on your payroll," conceded Mina. "But about my roommate…"

"Right. No guns, no weapons. You'll just have to use any martial arts skills you might randomly have, or your magic," said Kazuya.

"And we can set up a link with our phones so we can record and eavesdrop on the whole thing," said Naoki. "So you can threaten her with exposure if anything goes south. But first, I'll go scan her."

"Why do you think I'm going to have to fight her?" asked Mina.

Kazuya and Naoki looked at each other. "It generally turns out that way," said Kazuya.

"Doesn't hurt to prepare," said Naoki. "I can just peep in on her through a window-" When Kazuya, Soma, and Mina gave him a strange look, Naoki added, "When she is in class."

"That reminds me," said Kazuya. "Hakuba, from what I've heard, you're not very good with offensive magic, right?"

"Yes," said Mina a little defensively.

"But you're much better than you would have been if you hadn't learned magic from your miko training," said Kazuya. Mina nodded. "Interesting…" Kazuya stared off into space. "You've only been learning offensive magic for, what, less than twenty solid hours, and you're probably ahead of the curve… Hm … That just raises more questions…"

This continued for a long pause, before Soma cleared his throat. "Remember the plan?"

"Right. When are you free?"

The four of them worked out their schedules and wrote up a plan. The first thing they did was test for places in Mina's room where she could hide her phone during the conversation; they had to find somewhere that was both unobtrusive and wouldn't distort the sound. Mina then told Naoki that Makimura had an economics lecture at one on Fridays, so that Naoki could use the Spyglass on her. Naoki had at one point used it on all of them, but refused to tell anyone their exact combat statistics because he was afraid to single out the weakest person in the group (or he was just afraid to admit that he was the weakest). But he was willing to tell them later that Chihiro Makimura was above average for a human, and had no special skills. Mina shouldn't have any trouble with her.

X

A few days later, when everyone's schedules were cleared (and Mina's other roommate was out training for her club), Mina waited for Chihiro to use the bathroom and then started the call. When Chihiro came back, Mina asked, "Chihiro, what are you hiding?"

Chihiro went stock still. She was facing away from Mina, so she couldn't see her expression. Chihiro slowly turned around, expression forcibly neutral. "You… figured it out?"

Jackpot. "No, but now I know that you're doing _something_."

Chihiro looked like she could kick herself.

"Did you really think that I wouldn't notice the way you leave the room every night?" said Mina. "I've seen your scars. You might cover them up, but you don't even leave the room when you change."

"You look at me when I change?" said Chihiro, probably genuinely aghast but mostly looking for an escape route.

"Don't change the subject," said Mina curtly.

Chihiro looked like she was ready to either bolt or bash in Mina's brains with a kanji dictionary. "Don't worry," said Mina. "I swear on the name of my kami that I will not tell anyone else." _Technically, they're already listening_.

"Your kami?"

"I'm a miko. It's not something you put on Spacebook."

"If your swearing on the name of your kami, then why don't you say the name?"

Mina shrugged. "If I had just said, 'I swear on the name of-'" Mina said her kami's name-"then you wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Even if I served a god like Ame-No-Uzume or Amaterasu, you'd still give me a weird look."

"Point taken." Chihiro's hands moved away from the dictionary. Her throat clenched, and then relaxed. "Mina, I didn't want to tell you this, but… I'm a part of an illegal fighting ring."

Mina wasn't sure what she was expecting less, the fact that Chihiro spilled almost immediately or that it was something so… normal. At least, compared to her older sister who used witchcraft to fight for a secret government organization, her partially undead best friend who sometimes was kidnapped by evil cults, his demonic, perpetually half naked roommate who once demolished a wall when he was jogging distracted, and his other roommate whose memoirs doubled as a guide to surviving the apocalypse. "You what?"

"Are you still going to keep my secret?" asked Chihiro warily, slowly snaking her hand towards a much thicker proof textbook.

Mina nodded shakily. "Sacred vows aren't to be taken lightly."

"Good," said Chihiro, shoulders relaxing. She then opened up her laptop and started looking up video games.

"So… how did a girl like you get involved with an illegal fighting ring?" asked Mina once it was clear that Chihiro wasn't going to stop watching videos any time soon.

"Why should I tell you?" asked Chihiro.

"No reason, just because I'm nosy," said Mina. _No, it's because you're not showing me any proof. If someone's nervous, that means that they're lying, right? Unless they're too nervous to lie, or just nervous from being interrogated. What the hell, a bit of pressure won't hurt._

Chihiro gave a dramatic sigh as she shut her laptop. "Fine. A couple of years ago, I really needed a lot of money, so I entered the ring. I didn't win, but my friend made some bets and hauled out enough money to pay off my debts. I still owe her all that money, and I've been going at the tournament every since."

"She's making you risk your life and safety for money?" asked Mina. "Have you considered breaking off your relationship?"

"No, she doesn't care about the money, but I can't leave a debt like that unpaid," said Chihiro seriously. "It's an honor thing." She opened up her laptop again.

"Doesn't the tournament have an entrance fee?" asked Mina before Chihiro could type in her password. "Wouldn't you eventually lose more money than you'd gain on the off chance that you win?"

"Actually, they make most of their money from bets and tickets, so fighters get in free," said Chihiro, typing away at something. "Watching lots of people getting beaten up is still amusing even if they don't have money. I don't have to worry about the sunk cost fallacy."

"Sure," said Mina, who could neither confirm nor deny this. "If this is a fighting ring, then why do you have cuts on your body? It's not a sword fighting tournament, is it?"

"Any hand to hand weapon is legal, including swords and knives," said Chihiro.

"Did someone bring in a flamethrower?" asked Mina.

"No, that one on my shoulder is from a campfire accident," said Chihiro.

"If you're going out every night, how are you not hospitalized?" asked Mina.

"Just because it's an illegal fighting ring doesn't mean that we're stupid," said Chihiro. "We can't have people dying in our arena, or else the cops will get on our tail. Sure, people get hurt; the fighters don't try to maim their opponents, but they don't try to not maim them. But I'm small and a good dodger. And before you say anything about a girl getting involved in dirty business, the champion of the first tournament I was in was a girl my age. She didn't even use a weapon, either; she pulled off some moves that looked like they were straight out of a kung fu movie. Don't ask for her name; it's foreign, and those tend to be hard to remember."

"I wasn't going to say it," said Mina.

"Good," said Chihiro. "Oh, and please don't tell the cops?"

"Of course not," said Mina. "I won't get in the way of regaining your honor."

"No, it's not that," said Chihiro, a bit surprised. "Well, it is about the money, but mostly because I don't want to get lynched when they find out I tattled. Or they might lynch _you_."

"Is that a threat?"

"No, it's a warning," said Chihiro. There was no hint of malice in her voice.

Mina nodded. "Why are you telling me this?"

Chihiro stopped typing. "Actually… you're the first person I had to explain this to," she said sheepishly. "My parents don't walk in on me changing, I only go to public baths when I'm absolutely sure that no one is there, and I've never had a roommate before. And it's better that you know that I'm a delinquent than think that I'm a stripper or something."

"Oh," said Mina. "I see."

"So please, don't tell Karin? I'll tell her only if she asks."

"I won't," said Mina.

X

"So there's an illegal fighting tournament somewhere?" said Naoki once everyone was sure that the call disconnected. "Maybe we should go in."

"Naoki, that defeats the purpose of 'laying low'," said Kazuya. "The last thing we want is the underworld noticing that there's a tiny teenage boy who is immune to weapons."

"Who is Karin, anyways?" asked Soma.

Naoki shrugged. "No idea. I knew a Karin back in high school."

"I'll ask Mina later, then," said Soma.

There was a knock on the door. Soma opened the door to let in Mina.

"I don't believe a word of what she said," said Mina once she had a cup of tea in her hands.

"What don't you believe?" asked Kazuya.

"What kind of a fighting ring cares about safety?" said Mina.

"Legal ones?" suggested Naoki.

"Yes, that's how they stay legal," said Mina, rolling her eyes.

"It's probably illegal because of the gambling," said Soma.

Kazuya shrugged. "It doesn't seem that strange to me."

Soma scoffed. "Like you're an expert in… wait, you _are_ an expert in underground fighting."

"Not quite underground, but it was lawless," said Kazuya. "They're not as bad as movies make them out to be. Not every illegal fighting ring plays by the same rules, but at least in Valhalla, you weren't allowed to kill your opponent. The population was low enough as it was, and most of the gladiators had to go to work the next day. If you beat someone so badly that they couldn't farm the next day, they got your next paycheck. Of course, some people deliberately fought injured for the break and extra Macca, until we realized that the scams were reducing food production efficiency. After that, the arena started hiring healers. Pascal told me that it changed after I died. Most gladiators were full-timers, which wouldn't be that bad if they didn't make murder legal. Then again, the population was exploding by then. Hm… maybe that was their population control…The strongest people are a threat, so make them kill each other."

"Who's Pascal?" asked Mina.

Kazuya snapped out of his memories. "My dog."

"Ah."

"As for Makimura coming back with cuts instead of broken bones in an arena full of bruisers, it's entirely possible," said Kazuya. "It might seem counterintuitive, but if you're not afraid of getting hurt when you fight, you don't generally get hurt as badly as if you just defended and dodged. Sometimes, you have to drink up the minor injuries so that you don't get a lethal one. Take it from me, the guy who needs armor."

"I'll take your word for it," said Mina. "But just because she has a reasonable explanation doesn't mean that she's right."

"Of course not," said Naoki.

"Personally, I think she was telling the truth," said Kazuya. "She responded to your questions too quickly and calmly for lying. She was even multitasking when you were digging for details. There's a chance that she's an experienced liar, but those are hard to come by. As long as she stays out of our way, it doesn't matter if she's lying or not."

Naoki stared at Kazuya. "Why do I get the feeling that since you said that, we're going to have to duel her at the first light of the New Year or something?"

X

As soon as Mina left to take a bath, Chihiro Makimura let out a sigh of relief. "All right! She fell for it!" she said out loud. "All that time I spent coming up with a decent cover, rehearsing the story, and doing it for real in case someone asks too many questions finally paid off! Finding an illegal fighting ring, getting beaten up by people twice my size, losing 5000 yen for the entrance fee, and all those strange looks I kept on getting for beating up people twice my size while dressed like some sort of cosplayer was _worth it_!"

Chihiro Makimura laughed like a maniac, before a sudden revelation hit her like a truck. "I'm in Haruhata, in the middle of nowhere! I made that excuse when I lived in Shinjuku! How the hell am I supposed to find an illegal fighting ring!? Wait…I could say I'm training… but who trains at _night_!?"

TO BE CONTINUED!

(1): The fire alarm average decibel level: Fire alarms in real life tend to sound very different from building to building, but for the sake of the story, it did make the threshold that the Lich made. If you're wondering why I'm not using brackets all of a sudden, it's because my ] key doesn't work. I had to copy that one from somewhere else and I don't want to bother doing it with everything.

So… I passed the Bechdel test. Technically, Soma, Naoki, and Kazuya were listening in, but they were not active participants.

To clear something up, Chihiro Makimura, Mina's roommate, really did participate in an illegal fighting ring. However, she was lying about the details. Most of the contradictions are in the chapter or will be explained later, but one has to be pointed out. Chihiro claims that to retain secrecy, the fighters deliberately try not to break each other's bones or otherwise leave them with injuries that would draw attention. In reality, while murder was forbidden, the fighters do try to give each other severe but impermanent injuries like broken bones. Chihiro is just good at dodging.

Guess where Chihiro Makimura's surname comes from. Due to reader complaints, there will only be four recurring OCs.

OMAKE: Why Jonathan will not be appearing in this story.

Jonathan woke up, and immediately wished that he didn't. His mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. His arms didn't respond when he tried to move them. He felt like he really had to pee, but moving to get up would make him vomit. It was like a hangover, except without a good night before.

"Arise, Jonathan," said an ethereal voice. "Your role is not yet over."

Jonathan tried to speak, but no words could come out.

"Calm yourself. Your body has only recently been restored. You will be able talk again in time."

Jonathan sat up. Just a second ago, he was lying on a bed of dirt and half-decayed leaves. Everything around him was carpeted with wet, brown leaves, broken by trees and thin, bright green sprouts of… some plant. Jonathan was never very good with botany. There was no one else in sight. He managed to stumble to his feet. It shouldn't have been that surprising that it was so hard to move. After all, he was dead until a second ago. "Why h-hav… you brou-br-br-t me he…re?"

"I have chained your enemy to a tree at the top of the hill," said the voice serenely. Jonathan looked around as it spoke, but the voice didn't even seem to have a direction. "When you are ready, go. Your sword is right here."

"Where is here?" croaked Jonathan. "Where are you?"

"Your sword is on top of the rock to your left," said the voice patiently. "Goodbye, Jonathan…"

"Wait!" Jonathan managed to croak, but the voice had vanished.

With great effort, Jonathan stood up. _If_ he _really is here, then he must die_ , he thought to himself. _Every second he lives, he threatens the peace of the world._ With that, Jonathan reclaimed his sword and stumbled up the hill.

After what felt like an eternity of panting and groaning, Jonathan finally caught sight of a figure tied to a tree. He forced his body to lunge at it, blade forward… "Prepare yourself, Dracula!"

"Pardon me, but might I ask your name before you attempt to murder me?"

Due to the cocktail of his weakened state, the sun shining in his eyes, and the sudden, civilian voice, Jonathan missed his target by inches.

"…Did you just try to kill me?" said the figure. Now that Jonathan could see the figure properly, it was pretty clear that he wasn't Dracula. For one, there was no way that any undead being could ever allow itself to have such a heavy tan. For two, he was giving Jonathan a blank stare, as if he had no idea who he was. Jonathan might have been one of the second to last of the many people who killed Dracula, and was paired off with Charlotte at the time, but at the very least attempted murder was a great way to jog your memory.

"…Who are you?" asked Jonathan. He looked around, but saw no one else. This man was clearly the only one tied to any tree.

"Normal etiquette dictates that you introduce yourself before asking the name of another," said the figure.

Jonathan took in a deep breath. "My name is Jonathan Morris."

"Jonathan?" repeated the figure, recognition pouring into his voice. "My name is Flynn."

Jonathan tensed. "You remember my name?"

"What?" said Flynn. "No, I just know someone else named Jonathan. He looks nothing like you."

"Does the name Morris ring a bell?" asked Jonathan cautiously. "John Morris? Quincey Morris?"

"No," said Flynn, looking a bit confused. "Why are you asking me this?"

 _Maybe Dracula can't remember my family_ , Jonathan thought bitterly. "What about the name Belmont?"

Again, no sign of recognition crossed Flynn's face. _If he can't even remember the Belmonts, he can't be Dracula_. "Never mind. I'm sorry I tried to kill you," said Jonathan, cutting Flynn loose. "There was this voice, and it told me that my greatest enemy was tied to this tree."

Flynn glared at Jonathan, but didn't move to attack. "You attacked an unarmed, bound, and defenseless individual, just because some voice told you to?! What the hell is your problem?!"

"I'm sorry," said Jonathan, stepping back a bit.

"It's all right," said Flynn, calming down way too quickly. "I suppose this Dracula is your greatest enemy. Who is he? Or she?"

"Er… never mind," said Jonathan. The first rule of monster hunting was not to talk about monster hunting. The second rule was also not to talk about monster hunting. Actually, the second rule of monster hunting was to keep food and water on you at all times, but the rule book showed the first rule twice. When Grandpa Quincey wrote down the rules for the Morris clan, he accidentally miswrote a u so it looked like an a, so he wrote the line again. When Jonathan's grandchildren decided to transcribe the rulebook for posterity, they kept the extra line. Jonathan never found out why they laughed so hard at it.

The memory of his grandchildren laughing at the rulebook stirred up another memory, one where he and his children and grandchildren were sitting in front of a television, and he was yelling at the TV. Why was he yelling at the TV again? Oh yes, it was because the movie deliberately cut his grandfather from the movie. The movie was called… Dracula…? "Wait…" said Jonathan, dawning on the fact that to most people, Dracula was a symbol of horror movies instead of their clan's greatest enemy. "How could you not know who Dra-"

And then Jonathan suddenly collapsed, his miraculously restored body returning to the dust it came from.

"Jonathan?" said Flynn. "Jonathan? JONATHAANN! Oh well. Better go find Isabeau."

THE END

I think that while the Belmonts are satisfied with staying anonymous, the Morris family is a little pissed that there are hardly any film versions of _Dracula_ that include Quincey Morris.


	4. Chapter 4: Dead Story

I have decided to restart this story. I'm not happy with where I am or where it's going.

I wrote this story after I decided to have a more SMT-friendly version of my story Not The Intended Use. That story was originally about Castlevania characters messing with their powers, but I crammed a ton of SMT ideas into a supposedly 100% Castlevania story. It started getting ridiculous after one chapter dedicated entirely to Persona 2, so I decided to start Supernatural Support Society.

The premise of SSS was that the main characters were going to create a support group for people with supernatural troubles. My problem was that I couldn't approach that goal in a manner that I was satisfied with. I didn't have any concrete ideas for how the main characters would come together, and I was just hoping that things might come to me as I wrote.

The first problem was that none of the four main characters would be interested in making a support group. Looking back, I don't think that any of them would have opened up their hearts that easily. In-game, Soma is said to be hard to approach, and Mina isn't that angsty. Kazuya and Naoki don't have canon personalities, but I see Kazuya as having trust issues and Naoki wanting to just fade into the background. I don't like how they just spilled their hearts to strangers, no matter how similar they turned out to be. Even if they wanted to talk out their issues, they already see each other a lot, so there's no reason to make a formal club out of it.

Introducing new characters might have fixed the problem, but I realized that if the story was just about introducing new characters, it wouldn't really be a story as much as a series of introductions. I realized that something was wrong when I found that I couldn't write a single chapter without introducing someone new. And none of the characters I came up with would come up with group therapy. Hijiri is already well-adjusted, Maya and Ulala have each other to talk to, Julius wants therapy but needs patient confidentiality, Aoi just wants people to talk to, Nanashi doesn't think he needs therapy and is secretly afraid, and Hallelujah would jump at the chance but wouldn't put it forward.

But the worst part about it is that it turns out that I'm not even interested in the Society. While I was writing it, I was thinking, "This will be so cool when I get to the part where these people are in the gang," instead of enjoying writing the chapter I was on.

Writing a story with a given goal, and not working towards that goal just felt like filler. So I decided to pursue a different goal. This time, I have an actual plot instead of random events and hopes for the best.

I've decided to go back to writing about the main characters using and abusing their powers for fun and profit, but this time the circumstances are going to be more complicated. I want to do more with the consequences of the protagonists' actions affecting each other, especially when they don't know what's going on. Unless they already know in canon, no one will know about anyone else's powers at the start, so there's going to be more caution and fear. Even when they do find out, not all of them are willing to tell the others about the darker details, like where Soma gets his powers from. There's also going to be some active criminals in the cast alongside the supernatural police, and some conflict over whether the secret keepers should turn them in or not, especially when those criminals can't stop.

There will be more characters, but I'll try to be better about introducing them. I forgot about Flynn and Isabeau, and Aoi came out with no fanfare. I do want to try something with a 'background character is canon all along', though.

My next story based on this premise will be called A Game of Cat and Cat. I'm almost done with the first chapter.

In the meantime, I am also writing another story called True Reincarnation: Persona. It's an AU where SMT characters discover the power of Persona and investigate the strange cases of serial insanity and disappearances in the city of Haruhata. It won't just be a Persona spinoff with the names of SMT characters; the SMT games will have an impact on the plot.

Here is some out of context quotes that I plan on using for A Game of Cat and Cat:

"I thought that nothing would ever be stranger than a cannibal living under my roommate's sock drawer."

"Power like mine… comes at a price. Sometimes, it costs as much as 3000 yen a head."

"Just trying to break it down into chunks. Teddie can drink. Teddie has drinking buddies. Teddie has a drinking buddy named Vincent. Teddie has a drinking buddy named Vincent, Lord of the Netherworld, King of the Incubi, Conqueror of Nightmares, Protector of Lost Sheep…"

"If you saw what I saw, you'd throw up every time you thought of Spam, too."

"I think I'm more surprised that Gryphons can be small, cute, and pink than the fact that Lucifer has a daughter."

Meanwhile, the Lord of All Vampires was using his evil magic of doom to play with cute kitties.

"HQ hired this witch to help our investigation… I mean, HQ hired this woman capable of using magic to help us."

"After the first two magical talking black cats, the novelty just wore off."

"Lesson learned. Toasting your bread as you cut it with a laser sword is only fun if you don't cut the table in half."

"I gave up my humanity in exchange for the power to fight, not for the power to change the channel without using the remote."

"Oh, right, I remember you! …You're not still sore about being called Indiana Jay, are you?"

"A bit of relationship advice. When your significant other suggests a BDSM night, and her uncle walks in on you right when it's her turn to be smacked on the butt repeatedly with a ruler… do not tell him, 'She was asking for it.'"

"You're the third person this year to take me to this café and say you're not here to kill me."

" _All_ of you want to spend the afternoon skipping through a flowery meadow like a Disney princess? _Sober_? …Actually, that makes a lot of sense."

"Let us unite in our utter hatred of underage drinking laws."

"Technically, I'm Dr. _Paine_ , with an e, but who would give up the chance to sound like a supervillain? Do you want to hear my evil laugh?"

" _This_ is the ghost that's been haunting us? Did Elvis Presley drown in our bathtub or something?"

"No one ever appreciates a game of tarot-accurate Hangman."

"I still can't believe that Dr. Seward was in his twenties and ran an asylum. Then again, it was a different time. There's no way that anyone today would have a psychologist his age in charge of any project."

"Let me tell you a funny story about how you married into the Romanian mafia…"


End file.
